Iraqi resistance hacks into US drones

[MobBoss]

Trying to argue semantics again instead of addressing the real issues? Gee, what a surprise.

No semantics.

You either intentionally misrepresented the Army times article to an extreme, or did so in such an obtuse manner as to render your reading of it useless in your earlier comments in regards the article here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8743760&postcount=90

I simply cut and paste actual quotes of the article to show how wrong your reading of it was. On pretty much every point you tried to make.

Btw, here is another article that sheds more light on how bad the problem is:http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/12/airforce_uav_hack_121809w/

An immediate solution is to narrow the area from which the video feeds can be received, making it more likely that an insurgent would be spotted trying to intercept them, a defense official said. Typically, militants would need to be within 100 yards of the airman or soldier receiving the signal.

Yeah, that has a lot of use. Now I can see why the military didnt think this was such a huge problem. It isnt.

Moderator Action: Next time, use the "Edit" function.

 

[MobBoss]

What? No witty comment on the fact that a militant has to be within 100 yards to receive the signal?

Buehler? Buehler?

 

[innonimatu]

What? No witty comment on the fact that a militant has to be within 100 yards to receive the signal?

So you quote one news piece stating that. Others stated that hundreds of hours of recordings had been found on captured laptops. So should we draw the logical conclusion that "militants" are indeed shadowing the soldiers there?

And I'm sure that if it was a few hundred kilometers to the west you'd be all for using artillery against those militants, and screw the soldiers who might get hit - those threads about the Gaza bombings...

 

[Patroklos]

Hundreds of hours spread over years of time and god only knows how many thousands of recon flights. Face it, this is an over reaction to a known and deamed low priority threat vector. There is nothing more to this story. None of this data has been linked to any ambush or other insurgent success, enough said.

 

[J-man]

It now seems that at least one Iraqi militant group has been able to use the data.

From wired.com:

“We noticed a trend when going after these guys; that sometimes they seemed to have better early warning,” the officer tells Air Force Times’ Michael Hoffman and John Reed.

Eventually, American troops were able to raid a safe house of the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia, based out of Baghdad’s Sadr City. As Hoffman and Reed note, the group “has long been suspected of being a surrogate for Iran’s Quds Force.” U.S. forces were surprised at the level of technical sophistication. On confiscated laptops, they found footage taken by both Predator drones and the Army’s fleet of smaller unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.

They apparently used the data they tapped as a early warning.
It now turns out that meta data is also easily tapped.
The army is now working to encrypt the feeds but it still kinda weird why it wasn't designed to be encrypted.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/drone-feds-gave-insurgents-early-warning-report/

Edit: corrected some spelling (bolded my corrections)

 

[Defiant47]

Because obviously encrypting military communication is a waste of man-hours.

 

[RedRalph]

Because obviously encrypting military communication is a waste of man-hours.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

I bet they hired a french tech expert.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It now seems that at least one Iraqi militant group has been able to use the data.

From wired.com:

I actually posted the same thing from the same article a bit back.

Hmm. At least I thought I had. I can't find it now...

 

[Ghpstage]

Heck that signal being detected is a potential problem even without people being able to see the video itself. Detection of the signal immediately gives warning that a drone is nearby.

Considering a part of those UAVs advantages were meant to be that they couldn't easily be seen snooping from the ground, giving the enemy potential to use this signal to detect the aircraft (which, at a bare minimum gives a little warning of the cameras presence) at low cost seems like a significant oversight to me

Seems even worse to give a warning to people they are trying to hunt down when they have the big guns

 

[Abaddon]

I found this new bloody hilarious!

 

[nonconformist]

So essentially the Iraqi Insurgency is at the moral level of staling WiFi from the Americans.

 

[J-man]

I actually posted the same thing from the same article a bit back.

Hmm. At least I thought I had. I can't find it now...

My bad (in case you DID post it )

 

[onedreamer]

Hundreds of hours spread over years of time and god only knows how many thousands of recon flights. Face it, this is an over reaction to a known and deamed low priority threat vector. There is nothing more to this story. None of this data has been linked to any ambush or other insurgent success, enough said.

ONE group was found to be using intercepted data. This doesn't mean that only ONE group has done it, it means one group was found to be doing it. Not to mention that anyone could be doing it, not just Iraqi insurgents. Anyone.

 

[MobBoss]

So you quote one news piece stating that. Others stated that hundreds of hours of recordings had been found on captured laptops. So should we draw the logical conclusion that "militants" are indeed shadowing the soldiers there?

Or perhaps frequenting an area where UAVs are known to fly a lot.

 

[Formaldehyde]

My bad (in case you DID post it )

It turned out to be essentialy the same quote from a different source:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8743760&postcount=90

“We noticed a trend when going after these guys; that sometimes they seemed to have better early warning” of U.S. actions, said the officer briefed on the raid. “We went and did a raid on one of their safe houses and found all of this equipment that was highly technical, highly sophisticated. It was more sophisticated than any other equipment we’d seen Iraqi insurgents use.”

 

[plarq]

Heck that signal being detected is a potential problem even without people being able to see the video itself. Detection of the signal immediately gives warning that a drone is nearby.

Increase storage capacity in the drone.
Keep radio silence in the job.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

So this is kind of like stealing my Predator drone care package in Call of Duty, complete with the terrorist on the little laptop and everything. That is SO annoying.

No. It's more like being able to see what the other person sees when he is viewing the live video feed of a Predator missile dropping from the air onto your head.

Good to see another MW2 player. I love the Hardcore mode and as well as the Ground War mode. I have to say it is the most intense Arcade FPS eva.

 

[Formaldehyde]

No. It's more like being able to see what the other person sees when he is viewing the live video feed of a Predator missile dropping from the air onto your head.

The predators were likely being used for reconnaissance instead of attack. I haven't heard of any recent predator attacks against Shiite Muslims in Iraq. Have you?

Not to mention, you have the statement of one military official who claims that Iraqis have apparently been tipped off in the past by monitoring the video. They couldn't very well be tipped off if they were dead.

But this line of argument did make for a good sound bite on Fox News when uttered by the typical retired-general-military-apologist they are so fond of using. (1:20 in)

 

[Ecofarm]

So instead of having useful combat intelligence, they had hours of footage from boring daily surveillance patrols where nothing happened. Oh, the horror.