Article

2009-12-18 Iraq

US military drone security breach fixed-official

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Posted by Fred 2009-12-18 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 Word I have is that these were battalion and possibly brigade level tactical drones. Not the Preds, or other big (armed) guys.

Posted by OldSpook 2009-12-18 10:12|| 2009-12-18 10:12|| Front Page Top

#2 Passed as received from someone very familiar with the UAV programs:

Yeah, this has been a known weakness for years. It was accepted because fixing it is really hard, without severely limiting the usefulness of the aircraft. You want to protect the encryption devices, and thats hard when theyre in the hands of every platoon and SOF team, and on every aircraft (and these aircraft are lost every now and then). And you have to get everybody synced up and using the same keys. This is a warning sign to start working on it, though.

The suggestion in one of the articles that the signal could be hacked into is baloney, though. Theyre just receiving a broadcast signal, theres no duplex line. There is a command signal to the aircraft, but thats separate.

Posted by lotp 2009-12-18 21:12|| 2009-12-18 21:12|| Front Page Top

#3 It wouldn't take much to slow them down. Even a few hours or maybe days in some cases should be fine. Get some crappy old algorithm and throw that on. Change the key once a month even, who cares! Don't just give it to them, make them sweat. Use a PLA or something that you can change the programming for invisibly. These guys don't have the resources to reverse engineer that kind of stuff easily. Heck, you could even have it fry itself if it detected a crash or whatever. Airbags can detect a crash, use that tech. It's off-the-shelf. There is an easy solution out there somewhere. We don't need the ultimate solution here, just something to buy time until a good-enough one can be developed. Also, you might put up a secret ad on the internet for decoders for the new encryption scheme and see who bites. Mail them a gps transmitter that actually decodes some harmless stuff and see where they go. Then blow those places up.

Posted by gorb 2009-12-18 21:43|| 2009-12-18 21:43|| Front Page Top

23:34 Frank G
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