Yes, you read right: Iraqui and probably Afghan Insrugency taps the US Drones´feeds, by simply aiming a sat dish at them.
Noah Schachtman has a interesting article in Danger Room with some vid material of feeds about what could be the biggest security hole in ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The for me unbelievable part: It was known by US officials since the Bosnia operations, 10 years ago, and obviously did not get fixed since then.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military depends on an array of drones to snoop on and stalk insurgents. Now it looks as if insurgents are tapping into those same drones’ broadcasts, to see what the flying robot spies see. If true — and widespread — it’s potentially one of the most serious military security breaches in years.
“U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered the problem late last year when they apprehended a Shiite militant whose laptop contained files of intercepted drone video feeds,” Wall Street Journal reports. “In July, the U.S. military found pirated drone video feeds on other militant laptops, leading some officials to conclude that militant groups trained and funded by Iran were regularly intercepting feeds.”
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According to the Journal, militants have exploited a weakness: The data links between the drone and the ground control station were never encrypted. Which meant that pretty much anyone could tap into the overhead surveillance that many commanders feel is America’s most important advantage in its two wars. Pretty much anyone could intercept the feeds of the drones that are the focal point for the secret U.S. war in Pakistan.
Using cheap, downloadable programs like SkyGrabber, militants were apparently able to watch and record the video feed — and potentially be tipped off when U.S. and coalition forces are stalking them. The $26 software was originally designed to let users download movies and songs off of the internet. Turns out, the program lets you nab Predator drone feeds just as easily as pirated copies of "The Hangover".
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If you think militants are going to be content to just observe spy drone feeds, it’s time to reconsider. “Folks are not merely going to listen/watch what we do when they intercept the feeds, but also start to conduct ‘battles of persuasion’; that is, hacking with the intent to disrupt or change the content, or even ‘persuade’ the system to do their own bidding,” Peter Singer, author of Wired for War, tells Danger Room.
This has long been the nightmare scenario within Pentagon cybersecurity circles: a hacker not looking to take down the military grid, but to exploit it for his own purposes. How does a soldier trust an order, if he doesn’t know who else is listening — or who gave the order, in the first place? “For a sophisticated adversary, it’s to his advantage to keep your network up and running. He can learn what you know. He can cause confusion, delay your response times — and shape your actions,” one Defense Department cybersecurity official tells Danger Room.
A disaster if true, and more so as it looks it will take a long time to fix.:
According to officials they cannot encrypt the sgnals for various reaons: Other NATO forces depend on the feeds and cannot decrypt them should US encrypt them, and decryption needs to prep the ground stations to read the feeds.
Still, from my POV this is like allowing eney to listen to your BN nets or read your OPORDS.
Another FUBAR of the most technically advanced army of the world, and strangely foreseeable.
Rattler
