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@tsally is advocating having 'real' hackers hack on the thing to find vulnerabilities. In this case though, the vulnerability was known but it would have cost more money to actually fix it. Having people attack the thing for vulnerabilities still wouldn't change the fact that you would need to pay however much money to do the fixing.
pff, you didn't address what I said... "it's only another $1MM"
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Predator drones are built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego. Some of its communications technology is proprietary, so widely used encryption systems aren't readily compatible, said people familiar with the matter. If some Russian software could intercept it, it wasn't that proprietary!
They mean the hardware/software for the drones, not the protocol / format used for transmission.
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That's part of the design. Judging by the use and adoption of AK-47 I'd say it is a better weapon in general than M16. Usually an inacurate weapon is better than a stuck weapon when the soldier is facing an enemy.
The M16 would've been fine, if the brass hadn't skimped on the propellant.
Is anyone talking about the potential to not just grab video but to send control signals? What if the enemy could actually take control of one of these drones? Is that channel encrypted? How about sending back false video to not allow the true operators to know what is really going on or to generate false positives.
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I assume that's encrypted for obvious reasons. However, encrypting live video feeds requires a lot more prepossessing power than encrypting telemetry so they apparently left it out. Honestly, from a classic military standpoint encrypted video does little for you. If you can intercept the transmission then you know where the drone is. The only advantage is knowing what it is looking at, but a traditional army is large…
Guerrilla, BTW. The thing is, these drones' primary use is against insurgents, AFAIK.
Part of the problem is that the military awards contracts that are sometimes decades long. What was "good enough" security in 1990 is not looking so hot 20 years on. The US military machine may not perform as well as it has in the past in the new era of betas, hotfixes and patches. I will not be at all surprised when insurgent "rc-plane" drones start showing up with cell phones, arduinos, grenades and duct-tape.
It's dreadfully easy to shop build a rocket, especially in America where places like Radioshack exist.
Do you think obsfucation and spam could solve this problem? Could they setup cheap broadcasters all over the place that constantly send out fake videos and develeop a sophisticated filter they can use themselves that the insurgents wouldn't have access to? Then they wouldn't have to rework the drones themselves, and they could constantly rework the spam and the filter to stay ahead of them.
There are a lot of simple, inexpensive measures that could be used to neutralize their advantages.
OTOH, if you know where are the satellites drones use and the frequencies they employ, it would be trivial to just set up a very directional antenna coupled to a high-power noise generator to render the drone's controllers more or less blind and the drones useless.
At least until they evolve into autonomous drones.
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The gas jet propelled ones have max speed of 200mph, while predators have 135mph. Can't wait for some sort of anti-predator with EMP gun or something making the 5M investment look stupid :) [With some kick ass AI doing the find-kill, soldiers shouting "f * NPCs"] [Note: I know emp guns weight ~50kg]
Why bother with anything like an EMP? At the cost of the DIY, it's disposable... just fly right into the thing and physically knock it out of the sky. BattleBots in Space. That's a pirated video I'd watch.
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I agree. My first thought when reading the article was "WTF? No encryption?". Would be interested in learning more about the company that makes these, and how something so obvious was not done.
If they were first deployed in the 1990's, the technology was developed in the 1980's. Easily deployable software to grab the signals out of the air was probably outside the realm of what seemed possible then. Why it hasn't been fixed since is shocking!
Well, to be more accurate, I believe what you're saying, but I don't believe that it is a valid excuse.
Most of the functionality of these drones could be duplicated with nearly off-the-shelf hardware. (at least off-the-shelf for Boeing/Lockheed/General Dynamics/Raytheon/etc).
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pff, you didn't address what I said... "it's only another $1MM"
I was addressing the last thing that you said.
there is no contradiction: yes "real" hackers, yes spend money, no don't say "just another million"
sheesh