[Fosavoa]

I first seen this headline on the news this morning and the first image that popped into my head was the militants watching the live feed from an incoming missile that's targeting them. I lol'ed.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1261...?mod=yhoofront

[Evoncalabbalo]

Unencrypted signal. Hardly hacking! Bunch of script kiddies.

[Fosavoa]

Unencrypted signal. Hardly hacking! Bunch of script kiddies.

Haha yeah, all done with a cheap program that does it all for them. Not that I would know how to do it manually myself though. Imagine if some flight sim jockey did this on accident on his gaming rig and was able to take control of it. At least they weren't actually able to seize control though.

[SodeSceriobia]

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems.

How secure is this country again? If they can use cheap programs to view live feeds from drones...that are unsecure..overseas..whats stopping them from tapping in over here in the states?

[M_Marked]

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems.

How secure is this country again? If they can use cheap programs to view live feeds from drones...that are unsecure..overseas..whats stopping them from tapping in over here in the states?

It's a communications link, don't go batshit quite yet. They have no control over the UAV or it's systems. All they could get from this unprotected link was a video feed, which serves no good purpose to them anyways.

[Evoncalabbalo]

It's a communications link, don't go batshit quite yet. They have no control over the UAV or it's systems. All they could get from this unprotected link was a video feed, which serves no good purpose to them anyways.

Well they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't think it was useful to have... If you can see where your enemy is looking, that seems like a huge advantage to me.

[M_Marked]

Well they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't think it was useful to have... If you can see where your enemy is looking, that seems like a huge advantage to me.

I'm not saying it was not useful (not useful because it will be fixed very quickly, if not already has been), just stressing that the situation isn't the end of the world.

[Evoncalabbalo]

I'm not saying it was not useful (not useful because it will be fixed very quickly, if not already has been), just stressing that the situation isn't the end of the world.

Not the end of the world at all, but

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/17/i...ator-video-fe/


Pentagon officials have known about this flaw since the 1990s, but they didn't think insurgents would figure out how to exploit it. Way to underestimate, guys. The WSJ says the military is working to encrypt all Predator feeds from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but it's slow going because the Predator network is more than a decade old and based on proprietary tech -- too bad it's not proprietary enough to keep prying eyes out of it.

[M_Marked]

Not the end of the world at all, but

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/17/i...ator-video-fe/

Ha, sounds about right... some of the people here are too thickheaded to fix things or make things right the first time, unfortunately. But yeah, this is the government, you get people like that.

[Riprincattiva]

It gets worse...

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009...-us-warplanes/

Not Just Drones: Militants Can Snoop on Most U.S. Warplanes

[truportodfa]

Gotta love the media...

Essentially, if someone was talking on their house phone to someone else... and I just picked up another phone to listen, I just used my uber-31337 h4x0ring skillz to penetrate the phone network!!!

[O25YtQnn]

Yet just think of it. One reporter who had to go through all sorts of security clearances to get past the big, thick steel doors of the bunker-like control station (where he was not allowed to take any pictures for security reasons) says how ironic it is that he could have seen more by standing outside the place with a laptop and a small sat-dish.
You have to love it.

Is it really harder to steal cable TV than it is to get the "super-secret" predator satellite feed? Egg on faces all over the place. [rofl]

And while it might be relatively easy to encrypt the signals from the drones, it seems its going to be a flaming bitch to convert all the thousands of receivers out there to read the encrypted signals.......

Such is life. The world keeps spinning, unconcerned.