Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised • Hacker News Board

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#51

Post by dextorious » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 3:23 PM UTC

skeptical wrote: post #49

dextorious wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""While I agree with you, your last paragraph is just non sense. What's specifically bad? Honestly, if you ask this question you're shouting out that you have no idea what today's iran (or most of the muslim countries) are like.""" You don't get to judge Iran as "bad in general" by your standards, though. You only get to judge Iran as "bad for you", by your standards. If you want to judge Iran as "bad in general", y…

I'm sorry, if I'm Iranian myself does your reply still applies? Just wondering. I'm tired of this political correctness, it's so 90's. But it will take more than a couple of downvotes to shut me up. This "everybody has the right to their way of living" is getting old and stupid. Have you ever visited Iran? I find it interesting that when I talk about this subject with people from muslim countries, they understand me…

"""I'm sorry, if I'm Iranian myself does your reply still applies? Just wondering."""

Yeah, it totally still applies. You can find dissents in any country.

And, btw, you are not. Here's an older comment of yours on HN: """I'm from a country way more developed than iran in technological/scientific terms""".

"""This "everybody has the right to their way of living" is getting old and stupid.""""

Really? Sorry, but I don't find the "let's demonize them, force them to our own way of living, and basically use it as a pretext for invading their country and steering their natural resources / political personnel our way" any more modern or wiser...

"""Have you ever visited Iran?"""

No, but I have visited other countries in the region of which the same are said.

"""I find it interesting that when I talk about this subject with people from muslim countries, they understand me very well and mostly agree with me"""

You are probably talking to the wrong persons from those countries. Maybe mainly people that immigrated because they wanted to live differently, i.e huge selection bias?

"""Anyway, your comment is almost semantically null. Why wouldn't it be obvious that anyone's judgement has whatever credibility you want to give it? Furthermore, By assuming that everything is subjective you're basically stating that you won't dare to stand for any opinion of yours""".

I haven't said that "everything is subjective". I said that I respect the right of societies to live how they like over the right of any outsider to force them otherwise, especially if the outsider is a big mean war machine.

In re: objective/subjective etc, I said that you don't liking how people in Iran live just means Iran is subjectively bad for you. I added that if the majority of Iranians didn't like how they live, then Iran would be objectively bad.

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#52

Post by Symmetry » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 3:28 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #42

ajb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It uses spread spectrum transmission, which is resistant to jamming unless you know the secret key.

Resistent to accidental jamming, but jamming a broad range of frequencies would easily jam it, wouldn't it? That might require more hardware, but it do not think it require superior technology.

Without going into details, it really isn't.

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#53

Post by mseebach » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 3:36 PM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #24

yid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um...he was actually supporting your point.

Yeah, but he also adds: "Currently Iran is just the result of what happens if conservative fundamentals got ahold of the government of a country." Well, not all can be explained by "conservative fundamentals getting ahold of the government". This amounts to "their people are really like us, it's their government that's bad". There EXIST people/populations/countries that are conservative/unlike Americans in general, a…

> millions of Iranian/whatever people that WANT to live like they do

It is really not an unreasonable assumption that the population living under a totalitarian regime, does, in fact, not want to.

> What exactly is specifically bad about the Iranian government that other countries have not already did, including the US?

The rule of law. The rest amounts to rounding errors.

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#54

Post by vbtemp » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 3:58 PM UTC

How much certainty is there that the Iranians actually spoofed the GPS signal? How much evidence is there to overturn the null hypothesis (being that the GPS signal was either jammed, or the plane simply crash-landed inside Iran)

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#55

Post by parfe » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 4:16 PM UTC

All these complex and sophisticated attacks seem like too much work. It looks like the author either omits a step from the attack where the SecurID compromise allowed someone access to flight control systems or that RSA has a master key/method for breaking any RSA encrypted data.

I think the drone ran out of fuel. The flight control system prevented a stall by trading altitude for speed. Some emergency collision code attempted to avoid a ground impact at the last second making for a soft landing.

Something as simple as bad weather forecasting causing the drone to fly into a headwind during both inbound and outbound could easily account for the fuel drying up.

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#56

Post by rospaya » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #3

Iran is not some backwater and it's not north korea. When politicians sing about "bomb Iran" these are the innocent people they are talking about killing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v6kF8i-mbw http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/01/a-view-inside-ira... Before 1970 you would not be able to identify pictures of iran from parts of the usa http://www.pagef30.com/2009/04/iran-in-1970s-before-islamic-... Currently…

> When politicians sing about "bomb Iran" these are the innocent people they are talking about killing

Isn't that every country?

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#57

Post by calibraxis » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 4:37 PM UTC

dendory wrote: post #26

dextorious wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but he also adds: "Currently Iran is just the result of what happens if conservative fundamentals got ahold of the government of a country." Well, not all can be explained by "conservative fundamentals getting ahold of the government". This amounts to "their people are really like us, it's their government that's bad". There EXIST people/populations/countries that are conservative/unlike Americans in general, a…

When people talk about Iran it's more about the things that are, by any definition, wrong, than their traditional or religious choice. You simply cannot, in any modern society, discriminate against someone because it happens to be a woman, or throw stone at someone until they die because you didn't like his opinion. You can defend ideals, you cannot defend barbarism. Some of the things these people do (and others in…

The US and UK overthrew Iran's democratically elected secular government, installing the Shah. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%C3%A9tat)

Us Anglo-Americans are in no moral position to judge Iranians (or anyone else really), since our governments are the cause of so many of their misfortunes. (Imagine if China one day did similar to the US; how far would we regress in terms of hard-won civil rights?) And we're still threatening and dominating them.

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#58

Post by agwa » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 4:42 PM UTC

It's pretty rash for the article to suggest that the RSA algorithm might have been broken. If the key really has been stolen, it seems far more likely that it was breached due to crap IT security than a recently-discovered bombshell weakness in the RSA algorithm.

For example, the RSA corporation's SecurID service (not to be confused with the RSA algorithm) was compromised due to a spear-phishing attack containing an Excel spreadsheet with a Flash exploit. Then Lockheed Martin was breached because they use SecurID[1]. Lockheed Martin happens to make GPS satellites[2], so they might have a copy of the key...

This is completely speculative (in particular, Lockheed Martin claims no data was stolen and I know nothing about how GPS works). But in the past, there have been way more exploits due to insecure systems than to weak crypto (especially well-established crypto like RSA).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID#March_2011_system_compr... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-206

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#59

Post by ajays » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 5:03 PM UTC

dendory wrote: post #26

dextorious wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but he also adds: "Currently Iran is just the result of what happens if conservative fundamentals got ahold of the government of a country." Well, not all can be explained by "conservative fundamentals getting ahold of the government". This amounts to "their people are really like us, it's their government that's bad". There EXIST people/populations/countries that are conservative/unlike Americans in general, a…

When people talk about Iran it's more about the things that are, by any definition, wrong, than their traditional or religious choice. You simply cannot, in any modern society, discriminate against someone because it happens to be a woman, or throw stone at someone until they die because you didn't like his opinion. You can defend ideals, you cannot defend barbarism. Some of the things these people do (and others in…

You simply cannot, in any modern society, discriminate against someone because it happens to be a woman, or throw stone at someone until they die because you didn't like his opinion.

And yet the US is the strongest ally of the worst offenders in this regard, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Women can't vote or drive in Saudi Arabia; heck, they can't even go out alone, and can't go out with a male who is not a blood relative or husband. And oh, even when they go out in a car, they can't sit in the front.

Re: Drone captured by Iran may mean military GPS RSA "red key" has been compromised

#60

Post by icebraining » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 5:03 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #44

icebraining wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people talk about Iran it's more about the things that are, by any definition, wrong Why? It's not by the definition of wrong of those Iranians. Where does that objective standard come from? Don't get me wrong, I'm all of helping (in not very intrusive ways) the westernized Iranians steer their country in their direction, but that's just because I like those ideals and notion of right and wrong, not because they…

> Why? It's not by the definition of wrong of those Iranians. Where does that objective standard come from? That's a large debate on its own (read up on John Stuart Mill for instance) but essentially you're arguing for a philosophy called relativism, the end of which is that there's nothing objectively right... On the other hand that would mean that the U.S. is justified in however they treat Iran, since they're noth…

While I'd say I am in fact a moral relativist, I'd also say I'm not exactly arguing for it. As far as I can see, relativism is the agnosticism of morality - in the lack of evidence for an objective moral code, the only reasonable, logical position is relativism.

On the other hand, I'm rather ignorant about the subject, so my opinion isn't to be taken very seriously.

On the other hand that would mean that the U.S. is justified in however they treat Iran, since they're nothing objectively wrong either. Sometimes you really can't have your cake and eat too.

Sure, but I can still dislike it, which in practice means the same (essentially nothing, since my influence is zero ;)