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Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

csmonitor.com

11–20 of 134 posts

Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

#11

this sounds odd. other reports said that the final landing for these drones is done with a local, direct link (which was a possible candidate for how it was hacked), but this article implies (if i am reading it right) that by faking GPS it was misled into thinking it was landing in its normal place. also, in the linked article it says that the underbelly was damaged because the altitudes differed by a few metres, but…

Some of the speculation I've heard is that these drones have an auto-return-and-land mode that could be triggered by successfully jamming the communications links. It may be that the auto-land was designed with the hope that the legitimate operator would take over with a direct control when then drone got close enough to home base. It may be that the thing wasn't really able to make a completely graceful landing on its own.

Sounds plausible to me.

Russian-made GPS jammers have been reportedly on the market for over a decade now.

Alternatively, it might also be enough to simply fly your own plane and GPS receiver some relative distance away from the drone and rebroadcast the signals received from there with a higher strength. Of course, this type of forwarding attack could end up with the Iranians landing a plane of their own at the US base. That would be bonus points for style. :-)

Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

#12
post #7

This page 2 comment is making me not believe what I am reading. Data stream is not encrypted? Can anyone confirm? The US military has reportedly been aware of vulnerabilities with pirating unencrypted drone data streams since the Bosnia campaign in the mid-1990s. Top US officials said in 2009 that they were working to encrypt all drone data streams in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – after finding militant laptops l…

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/predator-dro...

Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

#13
Just throwing this out there, maybe the drone was intended to be caught as part of another kind of intelligence gathering operation. It's easy to blame this on incompetence, but the other angle is that the drone being caught was made to look like an accident in order to collect intelligence (gps, audio, etc) from wherever the Iranians took it, and this data could be offloaded to someone that could gain access to the drone. Just a possibility.

Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

#14
post #3

Relying on GPS or any external source of navigational data is risky. I cannot believe the vehicle didn't have working inertial navigation that would clearly indicate the GPS was off by quite a lot. Simple rule - if you have no contact with home and your GPS says you are a couple hundred miles away from where your inertial navigation, your compass and all visual cues (if cruise missiles have it, so should this bird) t…

I'm also very curious about this. Even though this is a cheaper drone, some simple voting scheme should be in place with multiple inertial nav systems. That seems fairly typical in the UAV world.

Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

#15
post #13

Just throwing this out there, maybe the drone was intended to be caught as part of another kind of intelligence gathering operation. It's easy to blame this on incompetence, but the other angle is that the drone being caught was made to look like an accident in order to collect intelligence (gps, audio, etc) from wherever the Iranians took it, and this data could be offloaded to someone that could gain access to the…

I've heard that suggested before, but it's probably in a warehouse on some military base being examined. It's unlikely we'd gain any valuable intelligence from the environment they bring it to. It's not like they're going to park it in their nuclear facility to do the dissection.

Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

#16
post #7

This page 2 comment is making me not believe what I am reading. Data stream is not encrypted? Can anyone confirm? The US military has reportedly been aware of vulnerabilities with pirating unencrypted drone data streams since the Bosnia campaign in the mid-1990s. Top US officials said in 2009 that they were working to encrypt all drone data streams in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – after finding militant laptops l…

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/predator-dro...

Thanks for the link. Wow, I am surprised they didn't fix it so far.

Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

#18
post #6

One American analyst ridiculed Iran’s capability, telling Defense News that the loss was “like dropping a Ferrari into an ox-cart technology culture.” An ox-cart technology culture that is allied with China and Russia. I hope this kind of hubris is counterbalanced by more realistic attitudes in the defense world.

Wasn't OXCART the code word for the 60's spy plane program that operated the U-2 and SR-71?

Hmmm... http://www.paperlessarchives.com/a12.html

Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

#19
post #10

(Prelude edit: A few people seem to be missing the point I'm making here. I know quite a lot about the predator, and a bit about the Global Hawk. I do not know much about the Sentinel. The jab about building a drone with parts on my kitchen table is a joke, meant to illustrate that this is either an absurd level of incompetence on the part of Lockheed Martin [not likely] or the article is incorrect, the latter being…

Exactly! Building GPS-guided RC drones is actually WAY simpler than most people realize (relatively). See: http://www.openpilot.org/, http://www.kkmulticopter.kr/
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