Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

[AgentDarkApple]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Actually this could also be dis-information. Trying to get the cave men to use more electronics, so that our missiles can lock in and ride the signal to their destruction.

xor

Eh, good point. Disinformation is one of the basic tactics of information operations.

[streaker69]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Eh, good point. Disinformation is one of the basic tactics of information operations.

I just figured that we were going to use "Everything that we say is a lie" tactic.

[theprez98]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Interestingly, SkyGrabber's site is down. Either they're getting so much traffic from these stories that they are essentially DoS'd, or someone has taken them out. Occam's Razor would indicate it's just too much traffic, although conspiracy theorists will no doubt assume the latter.

I was able to get there briefly, earlier today. I think, as you mention, it's just being overloaded with traffic.

Either way, it seems the software is just what they say it is, that is, to capture media off of satellite transmissions.

[sintax_error]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

I was able to get there briefly, earlier today. I think, as you mention, it's just being overloaded with traffic...

Yessir, it's back online as of a couple of hours ago.

[webtrol]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Few months ago I read this:
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...urrentPage=all

It seems US satellites are not really that secure either, and it is not really a secret. Navy pilot told me once "Remember that my plane was made by the lowest bidder"
I wonder if this is the same case with drones.

[AgentDarkApple]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Few months ago I read this:
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...urrentPage=all

It seems US satellites are not really that secure either, and it is not really a secret. Navy pilot told me once "Remember that my plane was made by the lowest bidder"
I wonder if this is the same case with drones.

From what I understand, that is how a lot (or all) of the defense contracting works - lowest bidder gets the contract.


If it is so easy to hack the satellites, then I wonder how likely it is that the enemy can manipulate satellite-dependent precision guided missiles? I am no expert on how these work, but it does seem possible. Does anyone know more about this?

[theprez98]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

If it is so easy to hack the satellites, then I wonder how likely it is that the enemy can manipulate satellite-dependent precision guided missiles? I am no expert on how these work, but it does seem possible. Does anyone know more about this?

This is actually pretty challenging to do because precision guided munitions typically use GPS. And while GPS signals are very weak, the receivers for these weapons are typically on the topside of them. So any ground-based GPS jammers don't do a very good job because they don't have light of sight to the GPS receiver. There was even a case early on in Iraq (~2003) when we (the U.S.) used a GPS-guided munition to take out a known GPS jammer.

[Thorn]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

From what I understand, that is how a lot (or all) of the defense contracting works - lowest bidder gets the contract.


If it is so easy to hack the satellites, then I wonder how likely it is that the enemy can manipulate satellite-dependent precision guided missiles? I am no expert on how these work, but it does seem possible. Does anyone know more about this?

I read the Wired article and the Brazilian paper on the details. (Thanks, webtrol!) What is boils down to is this: The "satellite hack" is merely using the satellite as a repeater for clear (unencrypted) voice transmissions. The US Military encrypted transmissions are still encrypted and still safe. There is a problem of bandwidth, however, and also probably one of signal strength. (Repeaters tend to repeat the strongest signal, and don't see weaker signals.) What that means is that some one who has a legitimate use of the signal may not be able to get through because a illegal user has downed out the signal or has taken all the available bandwidth of the satellite.

Simply put, the problem is that there is no authentication for the signals. If the satellite sees a signal in the correct frequency range, it repeats it. Signal-In = Signal-Out. It doesn't care whether the signal is that of an encrypted, US Military, high-level command discussion from the Pentagon or some Brazilian truck driver running illegal gear who's chatting about the weather.

Most likely when these satellites where first designed, built and orbited, the technology for getting a signal into orbit was cost prohibitive for anyone but military (whether US or other military.) Authentication was probably never even considered because the tech, transmitters, and satellite dishes were simply not commodity items.

[AgentDarkApple]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

I read the Wired article and the Brazilian paper on the details. (Thanks, webtrol!) What is boils down to is this: The "satellite hack" is merely using the satellite as a repeater for clear (unencrypted) voice transmissions. The US Military encrypted transmissions are still encrypted and still safe. There is a problem of bandwidth, however, and also probably one of signal strength. (Repeaters tend to repeat the strongest signal, and don't see weaker signals.) What that means is that some one who has a legitimate use of the signal may not be able to get through because a illegal user has downed out the signal or has taken all the available bandwidth of the satellite.

Thanks for the clarification. So at this point the worst they can do is severely disrupt the communications, like in a DoS attack? Still that could be bad - like the article said, what if a soldier needed to call for help and ended up hearing some foreign sports broadcast instead? Yikes! I know a lot of the deployed guys rely heavily on satellite telephony, so this still concerns me.

[Thorn]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Thanks for the clarification. So at this point the worst they can do is severely disrupt the communications, like in a DoS attack? Still that could be bad - like the article said, what if a soldier needed to call for help and ended up hearing some foreign sports broadcast instead? Yikes! I know a lot of the deployed guys rely heavily on satellite telephony, so this still concerns me.

Exactly. It's the RF signal equivalent of a DoS.

[renderman]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Here's something to consider that I picked up in Poland:

It's really easy to sniff satellite internet connection with the right gear (Major Malfunction and others have been doing this). Since it's shared medium, anyone can receive it, just like one really massive hub based network.

Imagine a bot/trojan/worm/malware that stole secrets and then sent them via UDP to a satellite ISP IP address. That means the signal gets beamed down over huge areas and can be received by anyone. You see where I'm going here?

If you know the address and can passively receive the signal, there's not much preventing you from using this as one helluva back channel to use as an anonymous destination.

[Wesson357]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Anyone know someone who we can contact about getting one at Defcon to hack on? We'll share the results, I swear!

Im here in Afghanistan right now, perhaps I can find a use for that sat dish and receiver in the local national shop after all....

[webtrol]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

"According to the Air Force’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan, the service has an objective of ensuring “protected communications” on its MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones by 2014."
(source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009...arning-report/)

See!!!! the government can act FAST! they discovered problem in Serbia in the 1995, then in 2009 it becomes public news and in 2014 it will be fixed!!!! (assuming no delays)

Float like a bee, sting like a butterfly.

Sin-cerely,
Trol

[RTKsbox35]

Re: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Was recovering from a motorcycle crash in a room full of people when I saw the story, drove me ballistic, with the U.S military budget so sky high you would expect that someone would be spending the time to distribute memo's on the need to encrypt data. Oddly the people in the room with me seemed un-surprised and un-phased by the incident stating a group concencus along the lines of "well no real harm was done, all they did was get intel". Perhaps these are the people that staff the budgetary think tanks behind these faux paus. Even if you want to ignore the larger danger of military insecurity, the mere embarasment that it should have caused the high end weapons dealears who supply the military with the drones and those who are capable of instituting effective security protocol with tax payer funds would be damage done in my mind...