U.S. Warns Of Spy Dangers Of Chinese-Made Drones

> DJI offered a bounty for researchers to uncover bugs in its drones

I'm not sure they understand how bug bounties are supposed to work...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/dji-l...

> there is only one country in the world systematically spying, bombing and manipulating friend AND enemies alike

Your premise is clearly wrong.

NATO bombed Libya. Every member of NATO is guilty. There are 29 nations in NATO. Here they are:

Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom the United States, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Czech, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, and Montenegro.

Those nations are all very happy to have the US as their superpower shield to be pointed at a target when it's convenient (see the recent past: Kosovo; the US rapidly stopped a genocide the Europeans couldn't or wouldn't deal with in their own backyard).

France aggressively lobbied the US to stay in the military conflict in Syria. In fact, Macron's lobbying is the only thing that kept the US involved as long as it was.

South Korea and Japan are mostly happy every day that the US has its military present - and nuclear shield - to protect them from China and North Korea.

Besides that, Russia was quite happy to put its military to use in Syria for its self-interest.

When it comes to spying, the five eyes are all obviously guilty. Beyond that, every country of consequence spies to the extent it's able to. The European powers are all guilty of it.

I think America was perfectly happy with China's ascent as long as outcome appeared to be a country with generally compatible values. Instead, we see a maturing country with values starkly different from America. Now that this is evident, and China's path certain, American policy is adjusting accordingly.

I didn't pick up that's what you meant by "both of them" so sorry for my misunderstanding.

However I still don't think 5G is an important factor here. If you control both ends at a higher layer of the stack (eg, it's your own software connecting to your own servers) you can do whatever you'd like. If you have OTA software updates, you can do whatever you like at any point in the future. If this channel is properly secured with TLS no one can intercept or fake it, and if you want, you can design the devices so it won't work without this connectivity present (see: most cloud-based "smart home" devices on the market today).

> If you control the cell infrastructure you absolutely can put cellular capabilities into products that aren't explicitly advertised. That would be a bigger risk for surveillance tech.

So many devices already have internet connectivity built-in, and if money is not a concern you can already incorporate a GSM modem and pay for a link to the existing cellular networks -- it's not like AT&T (or whoever) is going to care what you are doing with the connection, so long as you're paying for it. You can also use other short-range radio links.

I'll grant you that 5G introduces the possibility to have this link without AT&T's knowledge -- at least assuming they don't have the ability to also detect the traffic coming out the tower's uplink. The big downside of this attack vector, aside from the immense cost and complexity of building this into 5G carrier equipment and all these devices, is if detected and blocked at the uplink all that effort is suddenly for nothing.

Basically, the 5G-specific attack vector is expensive and brittle, and thus pretty unlikely. The attack vector at application level is easy and cheap (no hardware-related costs), gets you almost all the same capabilities, and in many cases can be done today on existing in-field products with OTA software updates.

They deserve some credit.

The following is a contrived analogy, admittedly not a great one, to illustrate why I suspect they can't give specifics.

Imagine if you have a gigantic elephant standing near a village. It's so big that you can only see one of the following, depending on where you stand: a trunk that can suck people up, legs that can smash, a tail that can create a wind that tosses people about. Three people are standing in different places to see each of these: Alice (trunk), Bob (legs), and Charlie (tail - poor Charlie). Someone comes running into the village and leaves an anonymous note saying a huge being is a threat and it is going to smash houses.

Except the villagers, if they can figure out who was standing where and what they could see, can tell who left the anonymous note. It was Bob, who could see the legs.

Giving the specifics they know about a threat reveals what they know, and what they don't know, and reveals how they might have gotten the information.