Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html

by bbg • 17 years ago

177 130 17 years ago

online.wsj.com

Shamiq• 17 years ago

Instead of hack, it should read "Insurgents intercept U.S. Drone video feeds"

rms• 17 years ago

That's more clear, perhaps, but this is certainly a hack

Devilboy• 17 years ago

'Fixing the security gap would have caused delays'

'... it would have added to the Predator's price'

If you're paying $20 million each you'd think another million to ensure your targets don't see you coming would be a no-brainer?

jpwagner4• 17 years ago

While I obviously think they need to close the security gaps, I just want to make a comment on your comment: it's that kind of thinking that keeps our taxes increasing and our economy in shambles.

I'm with @tsally on the solution to this kind of problem...

pyre3• 17 years ago

@tsally is advocating having 'real' hackers hack on the thing to find vulnerabilities. In this case though, the vulnerability was known but it would have cost more money to actually fix it. Having people attack the thing for vulnerabilities still wouldn't change the fact that you would need to pay however much money to do the fixing.

tsally2• 17 years ago

I have a thought. How about next time the military just flies one of these things down to Defcon and lets people have a go. The hackers get a cool toy to play with a for a day and the military gets a free fairly sophisticated penetration test. I'm sure the flaw would have been found; instructions on how to intercept satellite data with about $100 worth of hardware have been floating around for years. I'll edit this post in a minute with details for anyone that's interested.

EDIT:

* One possible LNB: http://bit.ly/7AGe7e

* Possible dishes: http://bit.ly/4NfMN1

* One possible receiver (for digital, you'll need a different one for analog): http://bit.ly/4zHyND

* Useful forum: http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/

That setup is enough to pick up signals from satellites (locations: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=satellite+index). If you do this as a hobby you might want to spend the money on a motor to tilt/pan your dish for you. ;-) The article implies that such a setup is pretty much what the insurgents used to intercept video from the drones. The drone bounces its video up to a satellite and the satellite bounces back down to the operator. The insurgents just grab it when it's coming down to the operator from the satellite. I'm pretty sure (or at least I hope) the receiver would have to be modified to decompress/decrypt the drone data properly. It'll do just fine if you're scanning for legit TV signals.

potatolicious• 17 years ago

The question is, what do our defence contractors care more about: making their weapons actually work? Or merely selling them?

vaksel• 17 years ago

i'm sure lack of reliability is part of their business plan. You make the perfect humvee, and suddenly the army stops buying as many.

There is a reason the AK47 is so much more reliable than the M16. And it's been out for like 60 years now.

rdtsc5• 17 years ago

The later is true. There is a large, high througput, revolving door between DoD and large contractors. Yesterday's generals are today's board members and C*Os of large defense contractors.

When something is purchased, or a bid is chosen, it is often because of those conections not because a product is inherently better.

The result is a lot of overpriced, under-performing equipment. The amount of waste is just ridiculous, even for a $650 billion market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budg...).

stcredzero8• 17 years ago

Improper use of encryption has been a military problem forever. (I seem to recall problems even in Classical warfare.) It just gets bigger with more communication technology.

makmanalp• 17 years ago

Or someone could find a flaw, not tell about it, sell it.

garply• 17 years ago

I'm interested in the details.

pmorici2• 17 years ago

The article said that people knew the potential existed since the mid 90's so the problem was't ignorance it was arrogance and apathy.

simonw• 17 years ago

Awesome quote: "Fixing the security gap would have caused delays, according to current and former military officials. It would have added to the Predator’s price. Some officials worried that adding encryption would make it harder to quickly share time-sensitive data within the U.S. military, and with allies."

kbob• 17 years ago

Oldest mistake in the book: since the adversaries dress differently, speak a different language, and are a different race, assume they must be idiots.

The WSJ reporter fell into the same trap: Iraqis and Afghans couldn't have figured out how to tap a video feed on their own; they must have had Iranian help.

atamyrat2• 17 years ago

I played with sky grabbing few years back.

Receiver you linked is set-top box, you need PCI receiver card, such as SkyStar (http://www.technisat.com/index381f.html?nav=PC_products,en,7...)

No, you don't have to modify the receiver, card captures IP traffic just out of the box with right software. There was another free alternative to SkyGrabber that runs on Linux, but I can't recall the name now.

edit: grammar

edit 2: I found it! Homepage http://sites.google.com/site/skynetr32/skynet.%3Ar32_index_e...

Screenshot: http://sites.google.com/site/skynetr32/skynetr323gh7.jpg

tsally2• 17 years ago

Well I was assuming the user was using a TV, but yeah, obviously you need a PCI receiver card if you want to interface with a computer. But thank you for the much needed technical details. I haven't played with it in a year or two and was basically just going off of memory.

rapind3• 17 years ago

I remember hearing about people intercepting well feeds that the networks would send (east coast to west coast etc.). They would use the big old dishes for it.

This is probably made up, but I heard that sometimes the well feeds contained worse-case scenario what-if's that news stations would prepare content for in advance. Like meteors hitting, plagues, etc.

pvandehaar• 17 years ago

If the Media found out that insurgents used Linux to hack military drones...

slackerIII• 17 years ago

Sounds like a great opportunity to feed some false information to the insurgents.

Kliment• 17 years ago

"said people familiar with the matter"

WSJ is really going down in journalistic quality, it seems. But seriously, problem known for a decade, "they're dumber than us so they can't use it" attitudes, in a device at that price point, you'd expect they'd think about these things. Reminds me of the Boeing report on Columbia. ( http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0... )

jjs• 17 years ago

"People familiar with the matter" has been WSJ's phrase for an unnamed source for years.

profgubler• 17 years ago

This is a grave oversight, but often it isn't the military that needs convincing of the intelligence of the enemy it is the politicians. These politicians and often news pundits have often said things such as why are we spending so much money on this war when we are fighting people who use sticks and stones.

So it is a catch 22 when you have to cater to the politicians you are often enabling your enemy. Not that I think we shouldn't have government or politicians and internal opposition, it is just that I wish politicians would do less grand standing and more actual thinking.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

It's amusing that they consider the lack of encryption a mere "flaw". Seems like a huge oversight to me.

jsm386• 17 years ago

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said.

dotBen• 17 years ago

This is actually a deeper problem - we (the US/UK/Western world) assumes the middle east doesn't have the same level of technical competency as us.

Iran is a pretty well educated country, and while Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't have the same level of education in the tech/science areas, there are many sympathizers who are well educated -- including educated in UK, US, etc.

There's actually a lot of comparisons to be drawn here with startup culture vs big business. Once again the smaller, less resourced are able to bring down the big players by being more nimble and not feeling the need to build everything "in house".

To the "in house" point - the US probably spent high $100ks of mine and other tax payers money building viewing software for these drones vs the insurgents who use $25 Russian shareware. Now, I'm not saying that the government should be running SkyCatcher to view streams - but I bet they didn't include opensource options into their video viewer solution that would have saved $$$ in upfront and ongoing maintenance costs.

jmatt• 17 years ago

Wow, It's amazing they couldn't fix this over the last decade. Even a simple obfuscation, anything is better than raw data that is so easily viewable and worse verifiable. I would assume there is plenty of people with experience encrypting and decrypting radio / satellite signals for the military in the US. Maybe the problem lies in it not being a software problem, but rather some horrid design that relegates it to hardware.

Either way now that this is public knowledge it needs to be fixed appropriately.

naveensundar• 17 years ago

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control.

What about the uplink?

Retric• 17 years ago

I assume that's encrypted for obvious reasons. However, encrypting live video feeds requires a lot more prepossessing power than encrypting telemetry so they apparently left it out.

Honestly, from a classic military standpoint encrypted video does little for you. If you can intercept the transmission then you know where the drone is. The only advantage is knowing what it is looking at, but a traditional army is large enough knowing something is in the area is enough. It's only gorilla style fighting when it becomes particularly useful.

stcredzero8• 17 years ago

Guerrilla, BTW.

The thing is, these drones' primary use is against insurgents, AFAIK.

jac_no_k• 17 years ago

Anybody remember the movie Body of Lies? Would be interesting to feed the insurgents a different video feed from what is actually be used.

waterlesscloud• 17 years ago

It's possible, though unlikely, that the entire report is deliberate misinformation.

ars• 17 years ago

I hope instead of shutting it down, the military feeds them false information. If done right, it could make a good trap.

johnyzee• 17 years ago

I hope, instead of merely listening in, the insurgents start to jam and crash the drones.

Sorry, but a different view needs to be represented. To a lot of people the foreign occupation of Iraq is a grave injustice, not just some big game.

astine• 17 years ago

While I want the US to pull out of Iraq as much as anybody, I think that you have to dead in the skull to root for the insurgents. Most of the problems in Iraq right now are primarily due to religious extremists terrorizing the locals and fighting with Americans to push their agendas. No matter how bad Iraq is now, it will be worse off if these people take over.

noonespecial2• 17 years ago

Part of the problem is that the military awards contracts that are sometimes decades long. What was "good enough" security in 1990 is not looking so hot 20 years on. The US military machine may not perform as well as it has in the past in the new era of betas, hotfixes and patches.

I will not be at all surprised when insurgent "rc-plane" drones start showing up with cell phones, arduinos, grenades and duct-tape.

ThinkWriteMute• 17 years ago

It's dreadfully easy to shop build a rocket, especially in America where places like Radioshack exist.

rbanffy2• 17 years ago

Shut up before Homesec confiscates our toys. ;-)

blhack2• 17 years ago

I think your post got caught in some sort of time dilation field from the 80s or something...

Radioshacks only sell cellphones (mostly) now. :(

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

http://diydrones.com/

alecco2• 17 years ago

The gas jet propelled ones have max speed of 200mph, while predators have 135mph. Can't wait for some sort of anti-predator with EMP gun or something making the 5M investment look stupid :)

[With some kick ass AI doing the find-kill, soldiers shouting "f* NPCs"]

[Note: I know emp guns weight ~50kg]

ashwinl• 17 years ago

As @noonespecial alludes to, some of the comments on the WSJ site and (less so) here are made incognizant of the complexities of the systems and timelines of procurement, testing and deployment.

@tsally the DEF CON suggestion is a good point. Because of ITAR, it is unlikely that the actual "toy" will be provided, but a comparable subsystem wouldn't be out of the question. E.g. The DoD regularly operates rapid reaction challenges with a simulated problem from theater - see http://www.kirtland.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123120737 Something similar could be done with DEF CON.

I think it is important to maintain perspective when stories like this come out. Contrary to some of the comments, defense contractors and researchers/engineers at gov't R&D labs do put the priorities of the warfighter first. Consider that many of the engineers/contractors/researchers/etc working on technology development are combat veterans themselves.

The issue is that we face adaptive adversaries.

ruslan• 17 years ago

Wonder how soon they find a way to spoof drone video streams with some open sourced software, probably VLC ;-)

conanite• 17 years ago

the U.S. military found pirated drone video feeds on other militant laptops

What is the meaning of "pirated" here? Are they going to sue militants for copyright infringement?

ShardPhoenix• 17 years ago

Perhaps they're using it in a sense similar to "pirate radio".

joshfinnie• 17 years ago

Isn't "pirate radio" a radio station that broadcasts illegally? If I am listening to my local pirate radio station, I myself am not a pirate. I think the use of pirate here is just to sensationalize the situation.

vtrac• 17 years ago

They're labeling them "pirates" so that the MPAA and the RIAA will get on the case. Those guys are relentless.

mjgoins• 17 years ago

New definitions of words creep into usage all the time, and this is one I've been noticing.

Folks are using "pirate" to mean "intercept" or "surreptitiously copy", rather than the traditional usage (leaving aside the even older meaning, of course) of simply "distribute copyrighted material".

e40• 17 years ago

Have we already forgotten of "pirated cable (video)"?

gaius6• 17 years ago

The drone recorded footage of the insurgents drinking grog and cursing landlubbers.

tamersalama• 17 years ago

Well - may be pirate is the new terrorist

scotty79• 17 years ago

War machine sending data through unprotected channel? In XXI century? After two world wars and a cold war?

How?

marltod• 17 years ago

The problem is that the people in charge of deciding what to approve/buy for the Military are not qualified. They get the position of authority by being successful in the military not by proving they understand the technology of the things they are buying.

I can see how this happened. Say the military guy had two choices of what to buy for video feed products.

Product 1. Fully encrypted video 15 frames per second and a 5 second delay.

Product 2. No encryption video at 30 fps and 1 second delay.

At the demo he says "product 2 is much better lets get that". When product 2 is questioned about security they say something like "we have proprietary codecs". From the miliary guy's point a view a codec is just as good as encryption.

andr• 17 years ago

That poses an interesting technical question - how do you achieve military-grade encryption over a communications line with heavy packet loss (assuming the drone->satellite connection is like that)? Most self-synchronizing ciphers would have too much of a lag for real time operation.

Perhaps two synchronized pseudo-random number generators, driven by synchronized clocks, could be used for variable key generation for a symmetric cipher.

mbreese• 17 years ago

I am assuming that there already exists an encrypted communications channel between the ground and the UAV (command and control). So, it would be trivial to include a command to switch encryption keys at specific intervals.

motters• 17 years ago

Having an unencrypted video broadcast on a military drone is just a dumb idea by whoever manufactured it. Encryption would seem to be the most minimal requirement for such an application.

KWD2• 17 years ago

I agree. My first thought when reading the article was "WTF? No encryption?". Would be interested in learning more about the company that makes these, and how something so obvious was not done.

jedc• 17 years ago

If they were first deployed in the 1990's, the technology was developed in the 1980's. Easily deployable software to grab the signals out of the air was probably outside the realm of what seemed possible then.

Why it hasn't been fixed since is shocking!

minus1• 17 years ago

I agree that the transmission should be encrypted, but I think the usefulness of the video feed to insurgents is overstated. You can hear and see the drones overhead, so it is pretty clear if your area is under surveillance.

LostInTheWoods• 17 years ago

You can not hear and see the drones. That is what makes them such an effective weapon.

TallGuyShort2• 17 years ago

They say there's "no evidence" that they were able to take control of the plane's in flight. Since nobody bothered to encrypt the video feed, and they're saying there's "no evidence", it sounds to me like they also didn't bother to encrypt the control signals. Nice...

richardw• 17 years ago

Is there any chance the problem is technical? Encryption increasing latency (at least for the pilot's view), anything like that?

eli• 17 years ago

"The military [is] trying to solve the problems by better encrypting the drones' feeds."

Where by "better encrypting" they mean "using any encryption at all"

stcredzero8• 17 years ago

Predator drones are built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego. Some of its communications technology is proprietary, so widely used encryption systems aren't readily compatible, said people familiar with the matter.

If some Russian software could intercept it, it wasn't that proprietary!

vidarh2• 17 years ago

They mean the hardware/software for the drones, not the protocol / format used for transmission.

johnwatson11218• 17 years ago

Is anyone talking about the potential to not just grab video but to send control signals? What if the enemy could actually take control of one of these drones? Is that channel encrypted? How about sending back false video to not allow the true operators to know what is really going on or to generate false positives.

gaius6• 17 years ago

If an enemy could take control of a Reaper he wouldn't... Until it was returning to base at the end of its mission, at which point he'd fire its Hellfire missiles right into the control building. Then the dominoes would fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!

rapind3• 17 years ago

Do you think obsfucation and spam could solve this problem? Could they setup cheap broadcasters all over the place that constantly send out fake videos and develeop a sophisticated filter they can use themselves that the insurgents wouldn't have access to? Then they wouldn't have to rework the drones themselves, and they could constantly rework the spam and the filter to stay ahead of them.

rbanffy2• 17 years ago

Good thinking.

There are a lot of simple, inexpensive measures that could be used to neutralize their advantages.

OTOH, if you know where are the satellites drones use and the frequencies they employ, it would be trivial to just set up a very directional antenna coupled to a high-power noise generator to render the drone's controllers more or less blind and the drones useless.

At least until they evolve into autonomous drones.

lallysingh• 17 years ago

Note that "skygrabber" is the #5 search phrase on google right now. http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X&oi=prbx_hot_...

joe_the_user• 17 years ago

Whether this particular mistake was avoidable or not, the event raises bigger issues.

The military is building more and more lethal, radio-controlled robots.

No networked device can be guaranteed to be secure. Computers have been hacked since they existed. The hacking of satellites is endemic. A civilian hacker was supposedly holding a military satellite hostage a while back.

Thus this strategy makes it likely that hackers will get the ability to command a lethal device sooner or later.

The risks of this might be worth the rewards in terms of avoiding casualties, projecting power, etc.

But there hasn't been much public discussion of the choices that are involved here. There should be.

Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

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