How difficult would t be for the DoD to make an OS just for themselves with no public distribution or documentation? That seems like the permanent solution here.
Well they'd also have to port Microsoft Office, etc.
Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet
191–197 of 197 posts
Re: Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet
#192Try disabling autorun for USB drives. These guys don't sound qualified to fly a paper plane let alone drones...
Re: Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or they could just fill all the usb ports with glue and remove the optical disk drives, if any. I thought the whole point of an air gap network is that nothing crosses the gap. Having those ports/devices available is just asking for it.
"usb ports with glue" Keyboards, Mice, Joysticks for these systems were probably designed with the idea that a USB bus would be available. It will take a while to replace all of these systems with their non-USB configurations. Given that BlueTooth is probably a no-no as well, how would one build a system these days that needs to support Mice, Joysticks, and Keyboards without using USB?
> "usb ports with glue" Keyboards, Mice, Joysticks for these systems were probably designed with the idea that a USB bus would be available.
Its not particularly hard to modify/remove the drivers which make only the usb-disks work on linux. I can't imagine it being much harder on windows either.
All other usb devices could work, but not external storage. Even better the usb drivers could contain a whitelist of device classes for which drivers can be loaded.
Re: Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was told recently by someone working with DoD equipment that although USB flash drives were banned, certain USB hard drives were still OK. He was telling me this because it was so hilarious and alarming.
I was talking to a guy who makes "encrypted" USB drives at the NSA TCC recently. It sounded scarily hand wavy to me. I was asking, "but where is the key stored" and he tells me with a straight face, "right on the drive".
Couldn't it work so that the key used to encrypt the files is stored on the disk, encrypted using a password as a key?
Re: Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know how I can be any more clear here: If they are not smart enough to keep malware off of what should be the most secure systems around, perhaps they shouldn't be building the fricking FLYING REMOTE-CONTROL DEATH MACHINES for a while, until they can figure out the basics. Capisce, guys?
It really shouldn't be so hard to put a TPM in autonomous killer robots and only let digitally signed code run. That should make it much harder for hackers.
How do you know you could trust the code in the first place?
Re: Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was talking to a guy who makes "encrypted" USB drives at the NSA TCC recently. It sounded scarily hand wavy to me. I was asking, "but where is the key stored" and he tells me with a straight face, "right on the drive".
Couldn't it work so that the key used to encrypt the files is stored on the disk, encrypted using a password as a key?
No, it was just "plug and play" not auth necessary as far as I could extract from him. Plain "check box" encryption.
Re: Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't it work so that the key used to encrypt the files is stored on the disk, encrypted using a password as a key?
No, it was just "plug and play" not auth necessary as far as I could extract from him. Plain "check box" encryption.
My experience with these is that you must either use your PKI certificate or a password as the key to decrypt the drive. The default configuration is generally to use the PKI certificate on the chip embedded in your ID card. Since you have to have that card in your computer to be logged in to begin with, using it to access other stuff is essentially effortless.