Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclusive-Iran-hijacked-US-drone-says-Iranian-engineer

by thematt • 15 years ago

202 126 15 years ago

jgrahamc2• 15 years ago

So, they spoofed GPS and jammed the rest of the communications to make it land automatically. Given that there are test transmitters for GPS devices used when consumer devices are being created it's not a surprise that they managed to do this. Not very long ago there was a GPS jamming exercise in the UK done on a military range.

I realize that as a Westerner I shouldn't be rooting for the Iranians but if they did spoof GPS, jam the rest of the communications and get this thing to land thinking it was at its home base then it's at least a neat hack.

Also, in the article there's a quote from someone dissing the Iranians' technical ability. This seems like a mistake. Iran is not a 'stone age' country like Afghanistan.

blhack6• 15 years ago

The chances of this machine relying completely on GPS for navigation is closer to none than slim.

I'm not saying the article is completely wrong, just that it's probably missing a giant part of what happened.

jgrahamc2• 15 years ago

You are likely correct. I doubt it relies on GPS for complete navigation, but it might rely on GPS to correct drift in an inertial system in which case if you spoofed GPS a little bit for a while (hours?) you might be able to trick the drone into thinking it was somewhere near where it should have been.

Given that Iran and Afghanistan have a border and the Iranians say it was captured in the NE of Iran then it's not impossible that they simply managed to get it to drift off course into their territory and land.

einhverfr5• 15 years ago

If course it is missing a giant part of what happened. Do you think the Iranians would tell about all aspects of it to a newspaper?

BrianLy• 15 years ago

There is some more information on GPS jamming at http://www.ausairpower.net/TE-GPS-Guided-Weps.html.

johno2153• 15 years ago

Hmm, the GPS signal the military uses is supposed to be encrypted and un-spoofable.

I wonder if Iran cracked it. If so, can the US reset the key easily?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Precision_code

cr4zy• 15 years ago

Maybe there's a safety fallback to normal GPS when the encrypted GPS goes out. The alternative would be no GPS at all in which case they'd need to send an actual human in to shoot it down or capture it.

cameldrv2• 15 years ago

The P code is on a different frequency, so the Iranians could have just jammed the P code, and then presumably the drone would rely on the the unencrypted C/A code which they spoofed.

eric-hu• 15 years ago

I don't know their actual hacking mechanism, but a replay attack could be done such that valid but incorrect GPS data is sent to the drone. The gist of it is that one records signals coming from GPS satellites and retransmits them. It could be transmitted with enough power to drown out any signal from actual GPS satellites.

There should be a time component in the signal that wouldn't match the internal clock, but maybe enough satellites saying the same thing would trigger a self correction... or it would disregard all GPS data.

gcb• 15 years ago

you don't have to understand a signal to jam it.

unless it also has frequency hopping when it senses a jam.

tarre2• 15 years ago

I think there is no need to hack the signal. It can be done by capturing and delaying signals. What you need for that is

1) the location of satellites. You can probably get it from the commercial signal.

2) transmission system, which overpowers signals from satellites. Many amateurs have it too.

3) location of the receiver you want to distract. I have no idea, how this works, but apparently it is possible.

4) program that calculates right delays for each signal so that plane will locate itself incorrectly.

Maybe the droid was programmed so, that GPS overrides other locationing devices, if it is working and the droid thought that GPS was working.

As jgrahamc says: "I realize that as a Westerner I shouldn't be rooting for the Iranians but if they did spoof GPS, jam the rest of the communications and get this thing to land thinking it was at its home base then it's at least a neat hack."

gaius• 15 years ago

Not very long ago there was a GPS jamming exercise in the UK done on a military range

I am on The List for notification of these exercises, and they are happening with increasing frequency. Someone has decided that a GPS denial scenario is looking probable and is preparing accordingly.

rbanffy• 15 years ago

Relying on GPS or any external source of navigational data is risky. I cannot believe the vehicle didn't have working inertial navigation that would clearly indicate the GPS was off by quite a lot.

Simple rule - if you have no contact with home and your GPS says you are a couple hundred miles away from where your inertial navigation, your compass and all visual cues (if cruise missiles have it, so should this bird) tell you should be, something is definitely fishy and you should self destruct.

Spoofing GPS signals is an interesting idea, but falling for them continues to be unacceptable for a UAV full of very sensitive information.

andrewcooke2• 15 years ago

i am also confused about the emphasis on GPS (see my comment), but i would guess that restricting the technology used in these things keeps the price down. GPS is good enough to label images, and probably good enough to guide something flying at a moderate altitude. it may have made more sense to keep these things (relatively) cheap (that also means if they are lost, there is less technology lost too).

caudicus• 15 years ago

It's probably just "failure of imagination" in preventing this hack - inertial navigation tech isn't exactly new (was pioneered in WWII and really came to age building ballistic missile navigation systems) so I doubt cost/classified technology would be a factor. It's just sad because having an intertial navigation system and a GPS system working to agree with each other or else some fallback (inertial homeward bound since that's an internal system, your accuracy would be off but it'd get back to friendly territory at least) would have prevented an attack like this (I believe at least - please tell me if I'm wrong).

Found this through a quick Google search - "DIY drones" http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/autopilot-system-for-full-...

I'm not sure what hardware in the system is really making the Iranian's mouths water - obviously the stealth tech has to have a great monetary and military value...I wonder how much the internals of this system compare to a predator drone that they already have captured many of as the article stated.

nosequel4• 15 years ago

I'm also very curious about this. Even though this is a cheaper drone, some simple voting scheme should be in place with multiple inertial nav systems. That seems fairly typical in the UAV world.

lallysingh2• 15 years ago

Oh good. I can make drones self destruct with a gps spoofer.

dmoney• 15 years ago

Careful, you might trigger its berserker mode.

andrewcooke2• 15 years ago

this sounds odd. other reports said that the final landing for these drones is done with a local, direct link (which was a possible candidate for how it was hacked), but this article implies (if i am reading it right) that by faking GPS it was misled into thinking it was landing in its normal place.

also, in the linked article it says that the underbelly was damaged because the altitudes differed by a few metres, but gps doesn't offer that kind of vertical resolution (as far as i know, particularly not from something that cannot sit in one place and integrate over time. this is (partly) why GPS is not used for landing - it's simply not precise enough).

perhaps the gps was spoofed, but it was only part of something more complex? like enabling the radio control for landing because the drone thought it was near the airfield?

[edit] this seems to be the original source that mentions direct landing control, although i've never seen that site before (am pretty sure i read it on the bbc or guardian): http://www.moonofalabama.org/2011/12/how-iran-probably-acqui...

marshray4• 15 years ago

Some of the speculation I've heard is that these drones have an auto-return-and-land mode that could be triggered by successfully jamming the communications links. It may be that the auto-land was designed with the hope that the legitimate operator would take over with a direct control when then drone got close enough to home base. It may be that the thing wasn't really able to make a completely graceful landing on its own.

Sounds plausible to me.

Russian-made GPS jammers have been reportedly on the market for over a decade now.

Alternatively, it might also be enough to simply fly your own plane and GPS receiver some relative distance away from the drone and rebroadcast the signals received from there with a higher strength. Of course, this type of forwarding attack could end up with the Iranians landing a plane of their own at the US base. That would be bonus points for style. :-)

harichinnan• 15 years ago

This is the joke of the century. LOL

sehugg• 15 years ago

One American analyst ridiculed Iran’s capability, telling Defense News that the loss was “like dropping a Ferrari into an ox-cart technology culture.”

An ox-cart technology culture that is allied with China and Russia. I hope this kind of hubris is counterbalanced by more realistic attitudes in the defense world.

marshray4• 15 years ago

Wasn't OXCART the code word for the 60's spy plane program that operated the U-2 and SR-71?

Hmmm... http://www.paperlessarchives.com/a12.html

anigbrowl2• 15 years ago

Excellent catch, and linkage. Thanks.

46Bit• 15 years ago

Indeed. It seems to me that even if Iran fails to get much useful out of it, there'll be buyers queuing up for it ready to pay anything.

MichaelApproved2• 15 years ago

Payment would be in the form of alliances and protection from US aggression.

azernik3• 15 years ago

I wouldn't downplay Iran's technological capability as this anonymous analyst seems to. By Middle Eastern (and developing world) standards, it's a fairly technologically advanced society - GDP per capita 4 times that of Egypt, 3 times that of Iraq - and this is a country where (unlike, say, Iraq in the 80s or Syria in the 2000s) its nuclear development program and missiles are indigenous.

That said, I'm sure China and Russia would also pay very well in both cash and political favors to get a look at the drone, which might end up being more worthwhile to the Iranians than pulling it apart themselves.

skeptical• 15 years ago

I don't know if you visited the countries you mentioned nor if you have any idea of their academic standards for example.

Many people in here are used to american technological society and have no idea what it's like in other parts of the world. In countries like Iran the huge majority of the population never red a book, can't really read and write much more than the very basics, most of the people haven't assimilated the concept of multiplication, just to give you an example. I'm from a country way more developed than iran in technological/scientific terms and I always have trouble to explain to Americans, Canadians, British, Germans, etc. how non tech-savy other parts of the world are.

I wouldn't downplay _the lack of_ technological capability. That's more like it.

I don't know what happen with that drone, but so far I've seen zero evidence and 100% speculation. That is a fact. I might be wrong, but there's no single bit of proof of anything.

SriniK2• 15 years ago

This page 2 comment is making me not believe what I am reading. Data stream is not encrypted? Can anyone confirm?

The US military has reportedly been aware of vulnerabilities with pirating unencrypted drone data streams since the Bosnia campaign in the mid-1990s.

Top US officials said in 2009 that they were working to encrypt all drone data streams in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – after finding militant laptops loaded with days' worth of data in Iraq – and acknowledged that they were "subject to listening and exploitation."

edit: fixed the format

kristofferR• 15 years ago

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/predator-dro...

SriniK2• 15 years ago

Thanks for the link. Wow, I am surprised they didn't fix it so far.

tantalor3• 15 years ago

I thought that the "unencrypted data streams" was video channel, not the control channel. Is that not true?

randomtyler• 15 years ago

You are correct. As far as we know, the "unencrypted data" was just video, NOT control codes.

blhack6• 15 years ago

(Prelude edit: A few people seem to be missing the point I'm making here. I know quite a lot about the predator, and a bit about the Global Hawk. I do not know much about the Sentinel. The jab about building a drone with parts on my kitchen table is a joke, meant to illustrate that this is either an absurd level of incompetence on the part of Lockheed Martin [not likely] or the article is incorrect, the latter being most likely. The Global Hawk, for instance, uses inertial navigation as well as GPS. Spoofing GPS against that platform would be annoying to the people controlling it, it would not get you a free Global Hawk. It is a near-certainty that the Sentinel has a similar navigation system.).

Some clarification on these drones:

Some of them require a human being with Line Of Sight to land them. "Predators" (what a lovely name), for instance. This thing is basically a gigantic R/C plane, and a pretty nice one at that.

You taxi it to the runway, take it off, and fly it via remote control. There is a human watching it the entire time (although the human may not be in close proximity to the plane. The militarized versions, for instance, have pilots living in Nevada, and planes living in Afghanistan).

Another plane, called a "Global Hawk", is much larger, and requires almost no human intervention at all. You open the hanger door, press the go button, and then leave it alone.

It taxis itself to the runway, powers up, takes off, flies its mission, comes home, lands, taxis back to the hanger, and powers down.

If this article is accurate, it would mean that this drone model requires no human intervention, which makes sense if it's primarily a passive, camera-platform.

What becomes really really scary about this is the idea that they're relying solely on GPS to fly.

How do I get into defense contracting, again? I have the parts for a "drone" sitting on my kitchen table right now that, from the sound of things, is about navigationally equivalent to this thing.

(By that I mean a $30 'duino, $50 worth of gyros and accelerometers, and $60 worth of a GPS. Hey government, here's a cost cutting measure: hire me to build you some drones.)

jsiarto• 15 years ago

Exactly! Building GPS-guided RC drones is actually WAY simpler than most people realize (relatively). See: http://www.openpilot.org/, http://www.kkmulticopter.kr/

nosequel4• 15 years ago

I won't comment on the UAV in the article, but you'd have to be a pretty wealthy person and have some really weird stuff on your kitchen table to have what is on the global hawk. I won't comment on specifics, but there is nothing simple about its gps and inertial navigation systems. Your categorization of UAV's was fairly simplistic and there are many more categories than two.

The Global Hawk is a much more expensive aircraft than the RQ-170 and is in a completely different category of aircraft. What happen to RQ-170 could not be done to the Global Hawk with they way its navigation works.

I don't want people thinking that autonomous aircraft are some simple thing that anyone can do. If that was the case, other countries would make them instead of buying them from the US.

Good luck making a laser ring gyro with a walk of < .002 deg/hr for $50 (or even $20,000) http://www51.honeywell.com/aero/common/documents/myaerospace...

StuffMaster• 15 years ago

I think he was just making fun of how easy it was to capture.

blhack6• 15 years ago

I think you missed part of what I was saying.

Of course I don't have the requisite materials or fabrication equipment to build the type of inertial navigation equipment used in missiles.

My point was that, if the article is to be believed, and RQ-170 relies completely on GPS and gyros, then I have the stuff needed to build its guidance system.

(The point here being that of course I don't, and of course it's likely more complicated than a GPS, so the article is probably incorrect)

tantalor3• 15 years ago

> this drone model requires no human intervention

No, the article clearly says that Iran severed the pilot's communication channel.

> "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."

> made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center

I believe this channel is over satellite, whereas the take-off/landing channel is line-of-sight like your R/C plane.

drunkenmasta• 15 years ago

What about the argument that a military plane would have multiple levels of internal defense such as automatic destruction? I read an argument by a supposed engineer who wrote that the auto protect mode would cause the plane to fly vertically towards the ground to cause as much damage to the plane as possible, which is why he/she was skeptical that Iran had a fully intact aircraft. See http://www.offiziere.ch/?p=6868

jrockway2• 15 years ago

What becomes really really scary about this is the idea that they're relying solely on GPS to fly.

GPS is pretty damn precise, especially once you add local ionosphere corrections (via WAAS or similar) and get to use the military signal. It's certainly good enough for navigating an airplane, because it's more accurate than what was in use before GPS (VOR).

Edit: relevant diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Accuracy_of_Navigation_Sys...

blhack6• 15 years ago

It may be accurate, but it can be spoofed.

Barely related, but VOR is freaking amazingly cool. Makes flying a lot of fun :)

Peaker• 15 years ago

Doesn't everyone get to use the "military signal" now?

The LSB's used to be encrypted, but the codes are public now?

callmeed• 15 years ago

"How do I get into defense contracting, again? I have the parts for a "drone" sitting on my kitchen table right now that, from the sound of things, is about navigationally equivalent to this thing."

I don't know how serious you are, but every state and local law enforcement agency in the US will be looking to buy smaller, more affordable drones for traffic and crime uses in the very immediate future (if they aren't already).

see: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/05/143144146/drone-technology-fin...

I know this is an aside to the original article ... I just wanted to say that, if you were serious, I would totally invest money into such an endeavor :)

rdtsc3• 15 years ago

> absurd level of incompetence on the part of Lockheed Martin [not likely] or the article is incorrect,

I am also working in the area of government military contracting and I would claim your credibility in LM's competence is baffling. Are we talking about the same company here?

nate_meurer• 15 years ago

Absolutely. Lockheed's an enormous company, so generalizations are risky, but they sure do some low-quality engineering sometimes. Their Littoral Combat Ship program is a textbook example of a clusterfuck.

daenz2• 15 years ago

Just throwing this out there, maybe the drone was intended to be caught as part of another kind of intelligence gathering operation. It's easy to blame this on incompetence, but the other angle is that the drone being caught was made to look like an accident in order to collect intelligence (gps, audio, etc) from wherever the Iranians took it, and this data could be offloaded to someone that could gain access to the drone. Just a possibility.

thematt• 15 years ago

I've heard that suggested before, but it's probably in a warehouse on some military base being examined. It's unlikely we'd gain any valuable intelligence from the environment they bring it to. It's not like they're going to park it in their nuclear facility to do the dissection.

daenz2• 15 years ago

Yeah I guess you're right. Just with everything I'm reading about "how it was done", I'm finding it really hard to believe that these subsystems weren't audited for flaws before they deployed.

anigbrowl2• 15 years ago

The location of their research facilities is itself valuable.

alphaBetaGamma• 15 years ago

That does not seem plausible. But there is the possibility that this is a clever ploy to give erroneous technology to Russian and China...

marshray4• 15 years ago

Or they could have its storage seeded with misinformation, or information that tricks those who obtain it into leaking information of their own. For example: http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/4/2537647/darpa-fake-documen...

But it seems more likely that they really didn't intend to lose the thing in one piece like that.

nosequel4• 15 years ago

+100

The Iranians have obviously never seen Troy or Holy Grail. Horse, rabbit, stealth plane, all the same really.

lostlogin2• 15 years ago

Given that the NYT is reporting that top secret documents were just left in a trailor in Iraq by the ton, I suspect that it's more likely the drone was landed in Iran by accident.

smackfu• 15 years ago

I don't quite understand how CS Monitor can vet any source inside the Iranian government as being non propaganda.

marshray4• 15 years ago

It may be propaganda, but it also has some plain technical claims that may be independently verifiable.

grecy3• 15 years ago

Lets flip the tables here and imagine Iran is flying surveillance drones over mainland USA, gathering photos and who knows what else. Would it be unreasonable to think the USA would try with everything they've got to shoot them down and/or capture them? Who would be the bad guy in that scenario?

I find it amusing nobody has thought to question what right the US have to fly a surveillance drone over Iran to spy on the country/people. Furthermore, I think it's pretty clear if you choose to cross a well established border and put something in my country without my permission, for the express purpose of spying on me, you better know I'm going to try hard to capture it as my own.

Is it even "legal" for the US to be doing this?

Who judges who can spy on who, and who is the "bad" guy when one side captures gear from the other side?

brown9-2• 15 years ago

I don't see anyone saying that what Iran did is wrong, do you? It seems that prevention is expected.

The secret of international law is that it doesn't really exist. Or that the "law' in "international law" does not mean the same meaning as the "domestic law" within a country's borders. All you have are agreements between countries but with no true external body that can enforce penalties or punishments without the threat of war. So what happens is that the most powerful win arguments.

grecy3• 15 years ago

You are correct in that this (and many other related articles) are not directly saying what Iran did is wrong... however, I feel the general tone and overall implication is that Iran have "taken" a drone that doesn't belong to them, and clearly are not about to give it back.

So as you say, "law" doesn't really apply, it's more of a moral decision as to whether a country should spy on another country. We can clearly see the outcome of that decision here.

beagle3• 15 years ago

> the "law' in "international law" does not mean the same meaning as the "domestic law" within a country's borders.

That's true. And also, the "law" in "domestic law" doesn't apply equally as people assume it does. Really, it's a huge fairy tale that "everyone is equivalent in the face of the [domestic] law", which for some reason many grown ups believe.

It's really a sad choice of words that the word "law" is used for both physical phenomena, where it i absolutely applied, and legal situations, where it applies mostly when it isn't inconvenient to the rulers (which is a word that better described what's usually called "leaders")

tantalor3• 15 years ago

> Is it even "legal" for the US to be doing this?

From Wikipedia,

On 9 December 2011, Iran lodged a formal complaint to the United Nations Security Council over the UAV violating its airspace. Iran's U.N. ambassador stated in the letter that "My government emphasizes that this blatant and unprovoked air violation by the United States government is tantamount to an act of hostility against the Islamic Republic of Iran in clear contravention of international law, in particular, the basic tenets of the United Nations Charter."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-US_RQ-170_incident#Complai...

So, I think the short answer is that it's not illegal.

On the other hand, if Iran had captured the pilot of a manned aircraft, they would certainly charge him with espionage, like Francis Gary Powers, the downed U-2 pilot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident#Aftermath

johngalt• 15 years ago

Everyone spys on everyone. We do it with drones and satellites, they do it with people.

guelo2• 15 years ago

Doesn't mean it's right. In fact it's fucking wrong. The CIA should be abolished. And this saber-rattling against a country that poses no risk to us is disgusting and wrong. The US is the most dangerous country in the world and must be stopped.

moheeb• 15 years ago

The Iranians are shooting themselves in the foot then by claiming that they jammed the navigation to bring the UAV down.

The US can then claim it was over protected airspace at the time and that the Iranian actions brought it into Iranian airspace.

ck2• 15 years ago

Why not just EMP it to crash it and collect it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compres...

rosser• 15 years ago

Because you want it intact, and don't want its circuitry cooked?

danielschonfeld• 15 years ago

I don't get it. With a budget of millions for these UAVs was it so hard to fit the thing with an IRS unit, or even an older INS unit to augment the GPS? Then one could add a single if statement checking if the GPS location has diverged greatly from where it was in the last NMEA statement?

What am I missing here???

littlebird• 15 years ago

It no doubt has an EGI - a combined GPS INS. It will depend entirely on the software interpreting that data.

DrCatbox• 15 years ago

It is suprising that many americans, for the lack of a better term, seem to be "butthurt" over this event.

Look at this news on reddit for example, first it was ridiculed, and speculation was high that it might have been a crash or accident, that the Iranians had luck, and that it in fact never happened, just propaganda. Then the Iranians showed it, and many comments said "its old tech any way". Why the butthurtness?

And now, "the takeover wasnt so high tech anyway".

gk1• 15 years ago

Some people on Reddit != All of Reddit.

Reddit != America.

dekz• 15 years ago

The OP was clearly describing the hive-mind of reddit, which does in fact follow American ideologies due to the overwhelming number of Americans who do use it.

GHFigs• 15 years ago

tl;dr - I don't think it's "butthurt" so much as people making it up as they go along.

There is sometimes a cultural or sub-cultural imperative to have and express an opinion on something even when there isn't enough information to go on.

I'm not sure how much of that is being American and how much of that is being on the Internet[0], but essentially it's not enough to just read the news anymore. If you don't have an opinion or belief (preferably a strong one) many people will regard you as ignorant, even if you're working from the same set of facts as they are.

When there's not enough information, it seems that people look first to familiar memes or established narratives. When it comes to US-Iranian relations, it's usually either the idea of American military supremacy (so it must have been an accident or Iranian bluffing) or the idea that the US intends to go to invade Iran any day now (so it's somehow an American ploy to start a war). There is a grain of truth in each which surely plays into the whole truth, but there are far too many unknowns for anybody commenting on the Internet to say with the kind of confident certainty that we so often do.

A site like Reddit (or HN, or anything with a comment box) amplifies this, because people like posting comments, and how can you comment on a story if you haven't decided what your opinion is about it? So people skim the article or just read the headline[1], draw conclusions which may be highly speculative, and then post whatever they think based on at most a few minutes of thought. And they might do this a dozen times a day, for years. So it becomes really natural for people to dash off whatever the easiest thing they can think to say is given the context, even as the context changes and the story evolves. On a popular story you might get dozens or hundreds of people saying the same handful of things.

[0] Or how much of it is what some call "Male Answer Syndome". [1] Check out the length of headlines on /r/politics/.

JL2010• 15 years ago

Christian Science Monitor: is this a reputable source known for good journalism?

simonsarris• 15 years ago

In spite of the title - Yes. It's a very well written newspaper that I've been reading my whole life.

(My father used to make us read it to him on the way to school even...)

They are well known for being anti-sensationalism. The religion bit has no bearing on the paper except that an article on religion must be in every issue, but they don't attempt to advance/preach the christian scientist faith in any way.

lawnchair_larry• 15 years ago

I too have been skeptical of this publication. Others have told me that despite the name, it is quite good.

The title is more meant to be "The Monitor" but it is owned by the Christian Science church. That is why the domain is csmonitor.

Their FAQ page also says:

"Is the Monitor a religious publication?

No, it’s a real news organization owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass., USA. Everything in the Monitor is international and US news and features, except for one religious article in the weekly magazine and Daily News Briefing – a version of which has appeared each day since 1908, at the request of the Monitor’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy. In an age of corporate conglomerates dominating the news media, the Monitor’s combination of church ownership, public-service mission, and commitment to covering the world (not to mention the fact that it was founded by a woman shortly after the turn of the 20th century, when US women didn’t yet have the vote!) gives the Monitor a uniquely independent voice in journalism."

joejohnson• 15 years ago

Yes. CSM is actually a very good newspaper.

Kroem3r• 15 years ago

Yes it is. It is one of the best US papers and is read internationally. It doesn't have an agenda, but is a little conservative. In other words, the traditional values of journalism are still held there - like breaking stories and original research and writing. I think importance of web-publishing there, and its success, is fascinating.

guscost• 15 years ago

If this is indeed a problem, just put a secure QR code on every runway. Easy enough.

HEY ECHELON

MichaelApproved2• 15 years ago

This is what the US congress should be investigating instead of passing bills that have no chance of becoming law or reaffirming "in god we trust".

nvk• 15 years ago

Meh, seems very simple to me (after some research).

Allow me to speculate.

- American Drone was destroyed with a hack tentative

- Iran built a replica for internal advertising of nationalism and for international press

- America won't comment and say it was a replica because it needs all the uneducated "Right" to believe Iran has some "power" so there is a reason to invade.

Come on haven't you guys seeing this movie before??

(updated for format)

Aloisius• 15 years ago

I for one welcome the next generation GPS satellites that the military will no doubt now put up.

Edit: It appears the first GPS III satellite will be launched in 2014.

presidentender• 15 years ago

In the early to mid 2000s, the US rendered military aid to Georgia, in both training and equipment. This included unmanned aircraft.

In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, and presumably captured some of those aircraft.

No security system should rely on the secrecy of its function, but in practice, many do. If any agency in the world can break the security of US UAVs, it'd be Russia.

Remind me again how the Russians and Iranians get along?

einhverfr5• 15 years ago

Every security system relies on some secrecy to function. For example, we keep passwords and private keys secret for a reason. The question is what pieces should be kept secret. Biometrics has a pretty impressive false positive rate, so are generally considered the weakest form of strong security.

But this then brings one to the heart of the problem.

whatgoodisaroad• 15 years ago

Correction, in 2008, Russia invaded PART of Georgia. If my memory serves, they only invaded as far as one military base, and that only temporary.

davnola• 15 years ago

No, the Russians occupied several Georgian cities, including Poti, Gori, Senakie, and Zugdidi.

slug• 15 years ago

It almost seems that someone read my comment here on HN a few days ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3330669

robk• 15 years ago

This all seems really fishy. You'd think if this was really top-secret level equipment, there would be several failsafes and an inevitable self-destruct mechanism in the event it was out of contact enough to reasonably assume capture. The fact it's wholly intact makes me wonder if it's some sort of honeypot.

trotsky3• 15 years ago

No program is going to take their long dwell time drones that need every ounce for batteries and pack them full of explosives.

jpadkins• 15 years ago

can't you make the batteries explosive?

would be a nice hack.

grandalf• 15 years ago

There is a campaign underway to raise funding for the next round of drone development. These stories are hitting the press to help drum up support for spending on drone R&D and production.

There are also stories that are intended to pave the way for drones being used on American soil.

feralchimp• 15 years ago

Tis the season for peace on Earth, or at least some good sportsmanship.

If they hacked it as described, the engineers who pulled it off deserve our congratulations on a hack well played.

If it's all some elaborate ruse for the sake of internal PR, well, good to know those exist outside the U.S. also. :)

mikescar• 15 years ago

> “We have a project on hand that is one step ahead of jamming, meaning ‘deception’ of the aggressive systems,” said Gholizadeh, such that “we can define our own desired information for it so the path of the missile would change to our desired destination.”

The thought of this leads to some conspiratorial thoughts: from various sources, we might know where a missile originated from, but who knows what might happen to it during flight?

JabavuAdams• 15 years ago

Why is it unpainted?

rajpaul• 15 years ago

I've seen a lot of these drone stories and discussion threads. The most interesting thing about them is the assumption that America has the right to violate other countries territory.

Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

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