Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
csmonitor.com
Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
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Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
#2So, 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 spoof GPS, jam the rest of the communications and get this thing to land thinking it was at its home base then it's at least a neat hack.
Also, in the article there's a quote from someone dissing the Iranians' technical ability. This seems like a mistake. Iran is not a 'stone age' country like Afghanistan.
Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
#3Relying 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) tell you should be, something is definitely fishy and you should self destruct.
Spoofing GPS signals is an interesting idea, but falling for them continues to be unacceptable for a UAV full of very sensitive information.
Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
#4this 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 gps doesn't offer that kind of vertical resolution (as far as i know, particularly not from something that cannot sit in one place and integrate over time. this is (partly) why GPS is not used for landing - it's simply not precise enough).
perhaps the gps was spoofed, but it was only part of something more complex? like enabling the radio control for landing because the drone thought it was near the airfield?
[edit] this seems to be the original source that mentions direct landing control, although i've never seen that site before (am pretty sure i read it on the bbc or guardian): http://www.moonofalabama.org/2011/12/how-iran-probably-acqui...
Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
#5This is the joke of the century. LOL
Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
#6One 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.
Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
#7This 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 loaded with days' worth of data in Iraq – and acknowledged that they were "subject to listening and exploitation."
edit: fixed the format
Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
#8This 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…
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Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
#9Relying 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 am also confused about the emphasis on GPS (see my comment), but i would guess that restricting the technology used in these things keeps the price down. GPS is good enough to label images, and probably good enough to guide something flying at a moderate altitude. it may have made more sense to keep these things (relatively) cheap (that also means if they are lost, there is less technology lost too).
Re: Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone
#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 most likely. The Global Hawk, for instance, uses inertial navigation as well as GPS. Spoofing GPS against that platform would be annoying to the people controlling it, it would not get you a free Global Hawk. It is a near-certainty that the Sentinel has a similar navigation system.).
Some clarification on these drones:
Some of them require a human being with Line Of Sight to land them. "Predators" (what a lovely name), for instance. This thing is basically a gigantic R/C plane, and a pretty nice one at that.
You taxi it to the runway, take it off, and fly it via remote control. There is a human watching it the entire time (although the human may not be in close proximity to the plane. The militarized versions, for instance, have pilots living in Nevada, and planes living in Afghanistan).
Another plane, called a "Global Hawk", is much larger, and requires almost no human intervention at all. You open the hanger door, press the go button, and then leave it alone.
It taxis itself to the runway, powers up, takes off, flies its mission, comes home, lands, taxis back to the hanger, and powers down.
If this article is accurate, it would mean that this drone model requires no human intervention, which makes sense if it's primarily a passive, camera-platform.
What becomes really really scary about this is the idea that they're relying solely on GPS to fly.
How do I get into defense contracting, again? I have the parts for a "drone" sitting on my kitchen table right now that, from the sound of things, is about navigationally equivalent to this thing.
(By that I mean a $30 'duino, $50 worth of gyros and accelerometers, and $60 worth of a GPS. Hey government, here's a cost cutting measure: hire me to build you some drones.)