Predator Video Downlinks Hacked By Iraq Insurgents
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Thursday, 17 of December , 2009 at 4:49 am
Take a deep breath and repeat after me: this isn’t as bad as it sounds. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that militants in Iraq and Afghanistan have been able to intercept and record live video feeds from Predator surveillance drones using a $26 piece of software called SkyGrabber. Several confiscated laptops have been found with “hours and hours” of intercepted drone video, which presumably let insurgents track and avoid the drones. The military has been aware of this potential vulnerability (namely, that the video downlink between the drone and its ground control station is for some silly reason entirely unencrypted) since the 90s in Bosnia, but (and this is the actually scary part) “the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn’t know how to exploit it, the officials said.”
Now, an important point to make is that this just the video feed. Drone command and control communications are encrypted, and there has been no interference with the drones themselves. Also, this vulnerability is currently in the process of being fixed. But as I said, the scary part is that the Pentagon underestimated the insurgents by assuming that they aren’t sophisticated enough to break into an unencrypted satellite downlink.
[ WSJ ] VIA [ DIY Drones ]
Comments (8)
Category: Military
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Made Thursday, 17 of December , 2009 at 6:05 am
Actually, they never said that the command and control link was encrypted.
They simply said that they had no evidence that the link was compromised.
Comment by Shartjortss
Made Thursday, 17 of December , 2009 at 7:40 am
Epic.
Comment by Robotbling
Made Thursday, 17 of December , 2009 at 10:33 am
This reads like damage control, when you should be lambasting the military for its stupidity.
Comment by Echelon
Made Thursday, 17 of December , 2009 at 10:51 am
Rule #1 of any kind of competition, struggle, or other confrontation: Always assume your adversary is two steps ahead of you.
Comment by Snelleeddy
Made Thursday, 17 of December , 2009 at 3:11 pm
During the war in Kosovo, at the end of last century, the same happened but with the satellite downlinks if I’m not mistaken so I guess the US army isn’t the fastest learner…
Comment by Foreigner1
Made Saturday, 19 of December , 2009 at 10:48 am
‘Hacked’…? If I understood that newsreport, there isn’t much ‘hacking’ to do- Just tune in on the right frequency by use of the right easy-to-buy software and hey presto. That amounts to the old ‘tapping off’ phonelines of Olden Days back ath the 1st half of last century.
Epic Darwin I would call this…
Comment by Amos Anon
Made Sunday, 20 of December , 2009 at 5:09 am
Re: Foreigner1: That amounts to the old ‘tapping off’ phonelines of Olden Days back ath the 1st half of last century.
Not only were these connections NOT ‘hacked,’ they were not ‘tapped.’ The signals were merely monitored. This is no more a case of hacking then listening to a radio station is ‘hacking the station.’ Media merely shows its ignorance, and contributes to the ignorance of others when they throw words around this way.
Comment by Evan Ackerman
Made Sunday, 20 of December , 2009 at 8:43 pm
I see your point, but in general I think of any use of a computer to access something that you’re not intended to access as hacking. Maybe this definition is too broad. But it’s not like listening to the radio, because radio broadcasts are intended to be listened to. This was an easy hack, but I think it’s still a hack.
I just looked it up, and for what it’s worth, Merriam Webster defines “hack” as “to gain access to a computer illegally.” I think it’s generally an appropriate description of what happened here, albeit it was a video signal and not a computer.
