Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

[Da6s]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html?mod=igoogle_wsj_gadgv1&

WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America's enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.

The drone intercepts mark the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas. They also point to a potentially serious vulnerability in Washington's growing network of unmanned drones, which have become the American weapon of choice in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

[Requia ☣]

I've been waiting for this 

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

I wouldn't really call this hacking. More like looking at an unencrypted feed.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I wouldn't really call this hacking. More like looking at an unencrypted feed.

Correct motorcycle. Still funny as hell though! I bet the developers did an assessment and figured it encrypted video would be a greater operational risk than some smart Iraqi peeking at the video feed. way to underestimate your threats 

[AFK]

Were the drones running on Windows Vista?

RWHN,
-going for the low hanging fruit. 

[Elder Iptuous]

I wouldn't really call this hacking. More like looking at an unencrypted feed.

Correct motorcycle. Still funny as hell though! I bet the developers did an assessment and figured it encrypted video would be a greater operational risk than some smart Iraqi peeking at the video feed. way to underestimate your threats 

I don't get it.
As it stands, I think there's more to this story than we are being told.
Why would they use an unencrypted feed?  Why would the military accept that?  My experience in the defense contractor field has shown me that military PMs are SERIOUS anal about classification/encryption/information security.
and the contractors are more than happy to oblige, because then we can hem and haw about how difficult the needed measures are, and how expensive it will be, etc.  so they throw more cash at us.
It just seems improbable to me....

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Were the drones running on Windows Vista?

RWHN,
-going for the low hanging fruit. 

Oh gods no... Not nearly enough new hardware to support Vista!!!

I wouldn't really call this hacking. More like looking at an unencrypted feed.

Correct motorcycle. Still funny as hell though! I bet the developers did an assessment and figured it encrypted video would be a greater operational risk than some smart Iraqi peeking at the video feed. way to underestimate your threats 

I don't get it.
As it stands, I think there's more to this story than we are being told.
Why would they use an unencrypted feed?  Why would the military accept that?  My experience in the defense contractor field has shown me that military PMs are SERIOUS anal about classification/encryption/information security.
and the contractors are more than happy to oblige, because then we can hem and haw about how difficult the needed measures are, and how expensive it will be, etc.  so they throw more cash at us.
It just seems improbable to me....

Yes, but I have seen the millitary pull the 'security by obscurity' card a few times... They may have falsely assumed it would be 'too hard'.

Either that, or there was a bug in the code that left the feed unencrypted. I recently audited a security app for a side job... they had a script that was wiping data on a daily basis. Then they added code to encrypt the data while it was there for the one day.

The person that wrote the 'wipe' program though had written it to look for a specific string of characters... since those characters were encrypted... the wipe program did nothing and they had months of data on the system.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

I wouldn't really call this hacking. More like looking at an unencrypted feed.

Correct motorcycle. Still funny as hell though! I bet the developers did an assessment and figured it encrypted video would be a greater operational risk than some smart Iraqi peeking at the video feed. way to underestimate your threats  

I don't get it.
As it stands, I think there's more to this story than we are being told.
Why would they use an unencrypted feed?  Why would the military accept that?  My experience in the defense contractor field has shown me that military PMs are SERIOUS anal about classification/encryption/information security.
and the contractors are more than happy to oblige, because then we can hem and haw about how difficult the needed measures are, and how expensive it will be, etc.  so they throw more cash at us.
It just seems improbable to me....

Well, I would argue that being able to see what the UCAV sees before it strikes is not going to do too much for you. You sure as shit can't outrun their missiles. They could also use satellites to do the initial monitoring, provided there wasn't a lot of cloud cover.

That said, they probably also figured that the odds of them doing this weren't too good to begin with. Considering the fact that it's taken them THIS long to figure out they could do this would lead me to believe that the military wasn't terribly inaccurate in that assessment.

The only technical reason I could think of why they might do this would be to keep the delay in the feed to a minimum, but I don't really know a lot about encrypted video feeds so this may or may not be a problem.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they did end up encrypting the feed or using the feed to trick their targets. That's what I would do anyways, make a false feed and lead them to believe that they're going to be attacked, encouraging them to make a run for it or otherwise tip their hand.

[Elder Iptuous]

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they did end up encrypting the feed or using the feed to trick their targets. That's what I would do anyways, make a false feed and lead them to believe that they're going to be attacked, encouraging them to make a run for it or otherwise tip their hand.

This was my immediate thought as well.  I wondered if they, in fact, were not planting this story to cause the enemy to do just that...

[Cain]

Or someone is pushing the story in the hope that it'll cause a flurry of encryption and security related purchases.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Or someone is pushing the story in the hope that it'll cause a flurry of encryption and security related purchases.

I love the way you think.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

Hehe, this ^

Also,

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they did end up encrypting the feed or using the feed to trick their targets. That's what I would do anyways, make a false feed and lead them to believe that they're going to be attacked, encouraging them to make a run for it or otherwise tip their hand.

This was my immediate thought as well.  I wondered if they, in fact, were not planting this story to cause the enemy to do just that...

I'd like to think that they are this clever. If not, I'd be happy to offer my services in this sort of thing in exchange for a commission.

Heh, Lieutenant Slanket. It does have a ring to it...

[Triple Zero]

I wouldn't really call this hacking. More like looking at an unencrypted feed.

Um, how's that not a hack?

As I explained in the other thread, it's like stage magic tricks, as soon as you know how it's done, it's no longer special?

If you'd frame it as "gathering information from an unexpected side channel", would it be hacking?

IMO, picking up communications from a military drone plane using a piece of cheap electronica is a hack.

"Van Eck phreaking" is also picking up an unencrypted signal using cheap electronica. Is that not a hack?

====

BTW my best guess about the reason why they didn't opt for encryption would be that they have certain legacy communication hardware that would not be able to process it. Just a guess, but it sounds like one of those very typical scenarios. "we're not going to replace all our field scanners."

[Requia ☣]

My bet is that they either just didn't turn it on, or they cut it from the final product because cuts to the computing capability meant it couldn't handle the encryption.

Treating a final product like its the superior (and more expensive) prototype seems to be a theme with the military.

[Cain]

Or someone is pushing the story in the hope that it'll cause a flurry of encryption and security related purchases.

I love the way you think.

Well, it is the WSJ.  Its readers are mostly businessmen and think-tanks hawks (who are heavily invested in military-related corporations, but sssssssh!  its a secret) and anything that identifies a potential weakness which they can then sell solutions to will go down well.  Expect a flurry of articles from AEI and the Heritage Foundation on information security soon.

On the other hand, John Robb thinks it is real.  I suppose there probably are specific difficulties concerning encryption for each unit (they were rolled out in 2001....using pre-2000 tech), not to mention the military's constant ability to both overestimate and underestimate their enemies at the same time ("terrorists are gonna blow up THE WORLD!!!?!!/ we can easily defeat a bunch of ragheads"), so it seems possible.

Also, this software was originally designed in Russia to steal media files from peoples satellite internet downloads.  How cool is that?