Have U.S. Drones Really Been ‘Hacked’ With $26 Off-The-Shelf Software?
The WSJ says yes. And everyone else has picked it up and run with it. But what, precisely, does hack mean? John Biggs does some intelligent guessing:
The story says, essentially, that insurgents in Iraq are “taking control” of our pilotless drones with a $25 piece of software called SkyGrabber. By “take control” the WSJ means “download video feeds from” and by “software” I mean essentially a satellite network snooper.
Now I’m not a rocket scientist, but it looks like what is happening here is that Iraqis are pointing their satellite dishes into the air and watching for downloads.
This would be approximately equivalent to packet or token sniffing that, if I’m not mistaken, is popular with teen l33t haX0rz.
See, all of the “*Grabber” programs – there’s also a LAN program – sniff packets on the Internet and intercept downloads. If you were on my LAN downloading a copy of the Spiderman over an unencrypted connection, I would, in theory, be able to watch this and grab the download alongside you. The same, in theory, can be said of satellite connections apparently used by the freaking US military. [...]
This suggests that the final link between the drone and the operator is between a satellite flying around in space and that that final link is unencrypted for reasons unfathomable to anyone with even cursory knowledge of network communications. Maybe they wanted to save on bandwidth costs?
We’ll follow this but I’m kind of flabbergasted.
The WSJ reports the military was made aware of this possibility as far back as 1999.
11 Responses to “Have U.S. Drones Really Been ‘Hacked’ With $26 Off-The-Shelf Software?”
The US Army… the military which is responsible for bringing us ARPAnet – the basic foundation of the Internet – into existence (shut up. Al Gore did NOT invent the Internet, merely pushed legislation that led to its spread to civilian use)… and they can't be bothered to realize that hackers are everywhere and that everything should be encrypted up the wazoo?! They couldn't even be bothered to edit the communications into pig Latin?! /facepalm
Another example of smart people taking, or in this case not taking, simple precautions.
I hope the Federal Reserve is more careful.
for the record, al gore never said he invented the internet either…
For the record, I say bs back to you……ooops, no, he actually “created” it…which is even more Godlike than mere mortal “invention”
“I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system”
Well, what he DID say was, “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
That is a verifiable quote. You can parse it any way you want, and people usually do based on party affiliation, but it was at least poorly worded and self-aggrandizing.
Stop the GDS, the problem is unsecured data, not the 2000 election. Maybe the military needs to add a Norton firerwall, and the drones will really be screwed…
a self-aggrandizing politician, hot shit. call the news. derp.
I apologize with the digression into Internet origins. That was not my intent. My intent was to make sure everyone clicked on this link http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTr… oh and uh one more thing, buy my book! …what, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity pimp their tomes too, I might as well get into the act… Ow…
Well taking control to me, means something radically different then simply being able to tap into a video feed. Look, I'm not saying this is a good thing, far from it….but it isn't like they are able to fly these things given that software. It does make you wonder if a real computer hacker couldn't accomplish that though. Come on guys, we clearly need better encryption!
Does it cost a lot? Surely, with the poor communications in AF/Pak, spotting where a drone is potentially heading can't be that big a military intelligence item? Can it.? What can we get for about $89 to thwart this?
I'm foregoing my cash for caulkers, so I have that amount available. O, call me.
you can read about Al Gore never having said he invented the internet here… and read about what he did say in context with a long interview with Wolf Blitzer regarding legislative and fiscal items Gore engineered and pushed for in Congress
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp