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Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

csmonitor.com

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

#71

Post by nosequel »

blhack wrote: post #31
nosequel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment on the UAV in the article, but you'd have to be a pretty wealthy person and have some really weird stuff on your kitchen table to have what is on the global hawk. I won't comment on specifics, but there is nothing simple about its gps and inertial navigation systems. Your categorization of UAV's was fairly simplistic and there are many more categories than two. The Global Hawk is a much more expensive…

I think you missed part of what I was saying. Of course I don't have the requisite materials or fabrication equipment to build the type of inertial navigation equipment used in missiles. My point was that, if the article is to be believed, and RQ-170 relies completely on GPS and gyros, then I have the stuff needed to build its guidance system. (The point here being that of course I don't, and of course it's likely mo…

I plus +1'd your comment, I get what you were trying to say, sorry I came across wrong. I was trying to supplement it a bit by saying there are many tiers of UAV's. I was joking about you having crazy crap on your kitchen counter, but typed a bit too fast to make a point of me getting what you were saying.

You can see in my other comments that it is pretty nuts if they actually captured the plane the way they claim. Based my knowledge of navigation design, it seems to be pretty impossible to convince a properly designed plane that it is somewhere it isn't without turning off the inertial navigation equipment (what is done during testing in anechoic chambers).

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

#72

Post by nosequel »

daenz wrote: 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…

+100

The Iranians have obviously never seen Troy or Holy Grail. Horse, rabbit, stealth plane, all the same really.

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

#73

Post by thesis »

grecy wrote: post #55
brown9-2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anyone saying that what Iran did is wrong, do you? It seems that prevention is expected. The secret of international law is that it doesn't really exist. Or that the "law' in "international law" does not mean the same meaning as the "domestic law" within a country's borders. All you have are agreements between countries but with no true external body that can enforce penalties or punishments without the t…

You are correct in that this (and many other related articles) are not directly saying what Iran did is wrong... however, I feel the general tone and overall implication is that Iran have "taken" a drone that doesn't belong to them, and clearly are not about to give it back. So as you say, "law" doesn't really apply, it's more of a moral decision as to whether a country should spy on another country. We can clearly s…

What's your point? Do you think Iran doesn't have spies?

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

#74

Post by moheeb »

grecy wrote: post #21

Lets flip the tables here and imagine Iran is flying surveillance drones over mainland USA, gathering photos and who knows what else. Would it be unreasonable to think the USA would try with everything they've got to shoot them down and/or capture them? Who would be the bad guy in that scenario? I find it amusing nobody has thought to question what right the US have to fly a surveillance drone over Iran to spy on the…

The Iranians are shooting themselves in the foot then by claiming that they jammed the navigation to bring the UAV down.

The US can then claim it was over protected airspace at the time and that the Iranian actions brought it into Iranian airspace.

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

#76

Post by eric-hu »

johno215 wrote: post #48
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

So, they spoofed GPS and jammed the rest of the communications to make it land automatically. Given that there are test transmitters for GPS devices used when consumer devices are being created it's not a surprise that they managed to do this. Not very long ago there was a GPS jamming exercise in the UK done on a military range. I realize that as a Westerner I shouldn't be rooting for the Iranians but if they did spo…

Hmm, the GPS signal the military uses is supposed to be encrypted and un-spoofable. I wonder if Iran cracked it. If so, can the US reset the key easily? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Precision_code

I don't know their actual hacking mechanism, but a replay attack could be done such that valid but incorrect GPS data is sent to the drone. The gist of it is that one records signals coming from GPS satellites and retransmits them. It could be transmitted with enough power to drown out any signal from actual GPS satellites.

There should be a time component in the signal that wouldn't match the internal clock, but maybe enough satellites saying the same thing would trigger a self correction... or it would disregard all GPS data.

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

#77

Post by dekz »

gk1 wrote: post #50
DrCatbox wrote: post #38

It is suprising that many americans, for the lack of a better term, seem to be "butthurt" over this event. Look at this news on reddit for example, first it was ridiculed, and speculation was high that it might have been a crash or accident, that the Iranians had luck, and that it in fact never happened, just propaganda. Then the Iranians showed it, and many comments said "its old tech any way". Why the butthurtness?…

Some people on Reddit != All of Reddit. Reddit != America.

The OP was clearly describing the hive-mind of reddit, which does in fact follow American ideologies due to the overwhelming number of Americans who do use it.

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

#78

Post by jgrahamc »

blhack wrote: post #44
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

So, they spoofed GPS and jammed the rest of the communications to make it land automatically. Given that there are test transmitters for GPS devices used when consumer devices are being created it's not a surprise that they managed to do this. Not very long ago there was a GPS jamming exercise in the UK done on a military range. I realize that as a Westerner I shouldn't be rooting for the Iranians but if they did spo…

The chances of this machine relying completely on GPS for navigation is closer to none than slim. I'm not saying the article is completely wrong, just that it's probably missing a giant part of what happened.

You are likely correct. I doubt it relies on GPS for complete navigation, but it might rely on GPS to correct drift in an inertial system in which case if you spoofed GPS a little bit for a while (hours?) you might be able to trick the drone into thinking it was somewhere near where it should have been.

Given that Iran and Afghanistan have a border and the Iranians say it was captured in the NE of Iran then it's not impossible that they simply managed to get it to drift off course into their territory and land.

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

#79

Post by einhverfr »

blhack wrote: post #31
nosequel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment on the UAV in the article, but you'd have to be a pretty wealthy person and have some really weird stuff on your kitchen table to have what is on the global hawk. I won't comment on specifics, but there is nothing simple about its gps and inertial navigation systems. Your categorization of UAV's was fairly simplistic and there are many more categories than two. The Global Hawk is a much more expensive…

I think you missed part of what I was saying. Of course I don't have the requisite materials or fabrication equipment to build the type of inertial navigation equipment used in missiles. My point was that, if the article is to be believed, and RQ-170 relies completely on GPS and gyros, then I have the stuff needed to build its guidance system. (The point here being that of course I don't, and of course it's likely mo…

I didn't get that entirely from the article. They had already cut off communications links, so it sounds like it was already running in some sort of backup mode, meaning that GPS and gyros were perhaps all it had left to go on.

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

#80

Post by blhack »

eric-hu wrote: post #76
johno215 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, the GPS signal the military uses is supposed to be encrypted and un-spoofable. I wonder if Iran cracked it. If so, can the US reset the key easily? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Precision_code

I don't know their actual hacking mechanism, but a replay attack could be done such that valid but incorrect GPS data is sent to the drone. The gist of it is that one records signals coming from GPS satellites and retransmits them. It could be transmitted with enough power to drown out any signal from actual GPS satellites. There should be a time component in the signal that wouldn't match the internal clock, but may…

Time is literally what GPS satellites are broadcasting.
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