French-UAE Intel Satellite Deal in Doubt – US Parts Raise Security Concerns

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140105/DEFREG04/301050006

by dexen • 13 years ago

181 83 13 years ago

It would be pretty awesome if the UAE put the interception technology on the satellites themselves. It would be a great way to get a discount from the French and perhaps a kickback from some American agency.

awjr• 13 years ago

To a certain extent, I understand and accept Nations spying on each other is a big game that they all play with each other. I get it. It's very James Bond.

However when your agencies are having a direct financial impact on your industries you really need to clean up your own backyard.

furyg33• 13 years ago

I don't understand or accept it. While your point about unintended financial consequences is very valid, I find this the lowest threshold of decision making.

I don't steal staplers at work, not because I might get caught, or because everybody does it, or because it may adversely affect my company, or due to some other unforeseen consequence. I do it because I've thought a lot about stealing and have concluded that it's wrong to do so.

The US has overwhelming military force (a house full of staplers). The US and/or France could have easily taken the decision to not deliver military satellites to the UAE (or to use political means to block it).

mythealias• 13 years ago

Wake me up when US decides to sell it military tech for security and not money. I agree that financial consequences might not be a priority in decision making, but at the end of the day US (or rather the corporations, which can no longer be attributed to just US) are interested in money. I don't think UAE will stop buying stuff just because it is know to be tainted, but they get upper hand in bargaining the price.

Also I don't understand your analogy to staplers fully. If US is a house of staplers and UAE (or any other nation) is not an employee there then the only reason they are not stealing is because they lack the skill.

On an individual level it is relatively easier to make decisions regarding moral issues like stealing but that doesn't work for a group.

brudgers• 13 years ago

Individuals have moral agency. Corporate bodies such as governments do not. It is a category mistake to attribute agency to them. Governments are neither moral nor immoral. They are amoral.

Defense satellites are no more staplers than monads are Scottish ballads. Defense satellites do not organize documents. They are tools to facilitate the use of violence. The UAE military establishment is following the same rationales as the US's - a bigger stick better insures achieving diplomatic objectives.

gbog4• 13 years ago

I may not steal staplers, and would certainly not pee in my neighbour's letter box except if really drunk, but, if I were in the position of Israel, which is a very unconfortable position, a war in fact, I would certainly work hard to find a way to listen to my hostile neighbours.

tn13• 13 years ago

Laws of morality do not apply to states. India has suffered a lot because it failed to understand this basic fact. I dont think there is any moral argument against what government is doing. The only argument is that American government is not strong enough to go ahead with these kinds schemes any more.

twobits2• 13 years ago

Well, you'd also have to know how much you gained from spying, to know the score. I bet the wins are much more than the loses.

ItendToDisagree• 13 years ago

The losses arn't to your 'agency' but to the companies in your country. So the opinion that "we're doing a lot of good but we can't tell you anything about it because terrorism!" outweighing the costs and lost sales to companies in your country seems pretty ridiculous.

drdeadringer2• 13 years ago

Part of me is amazed that these folks don't have a "blowback" plan.

Another part of me isn't surprised at all, out of suspecting a combination of hubris and incompetence.

johnchristopher• 13 years ago

I noticed the source of the article was voice of russia so I looked for other sources:

http://www.france24.com/en/20140107-competitor-sabotage-behi... (french news)

http://www.euronews.com/2014/01/06/france-uae-spy-satellite-...

Suggestions are made that the US or another bidding competitor planted the spying tech to ruin the french-UAE deal.

Still can't say if we are talking hardware parts or software backdoor.

salient2• 13 years ago

I think this was the original source, and it says 2 hardware components from US:

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140105/DEFREG04/3010500...

bane6• 13 years ago

My understanding is that the physics of imaging satellites is pretty precise, even a few ounces bias on one side can make the whole thing useless. Getting equipment of any sort installed on a very expensive satellite without anybody knowing would be pretty much impossible. I can't even imagine the complexity of designing such a device...it's not like it's a device that can be fired from a gun 300 meters away that sticks to the satellite and some 007 type happens to make the shot while the satellite is in transit to the payload fairing.

It would have to fit perfectly within the power and payload envelope of the satellite and literally not be noticed by any of the engineers or designers working or designing what's essentially a 1-off piece of space hardware. And having it in relative isolation during assembly for months or even years.

It'd be like somebody sticking an extra hard drive or NIC in the computer you built at home and you not noticing it.

Anybody care to speculate what this device was within the bounds of physics or is this just paranoid politics over some specialized American built hardware that France needed to source for the comm system?

The stated story smells.

http://www.france24.com/en/20140107-competitor-sabotage-behi...

has a more reasonable analysis

Finding backdoor technology two months after signing a contract that neither the UAE experts nor the French engineers had been aware of also seems unlikely, according to both experts.

"The most likely explanation is that a competitor has planted a seed of doubt in an attempt to sabotage the deal," said Charret.

vidarh• 13 years ago

Why would you assume it needed to be done without anybody knowing?

It would seem far easier to compromise/blackmail or bribe the right people.

gbog4• 13 years ago

If I were a French general and a colleague from the US came and said, ok, we help you sell this dish to the arabs but we add this little thing in here so a bell ring in my office if they plan to lightgun a nearby country.

I'd say yes. I makes everyone happy: French have the money, US has their bell and Arabs have their dish.

josephagoss• 13 years ago

The client (UAE) discovered it, the builder (France) put the tech into the satellite. I don't think anyone is really thinking the USA put these systems in behind their backs. France was in on this the whole time and they were hoping UAE's engineers would not be completely thorough in analysing their designs.

EDIT:

Have a read of: http://www.space.com/12996-secret-spy-satellites-declassifie...

These are older satellites and it sounds like the cameras could move slightly independently so that they may be able to compensate for the entire satellite being off a little bit.

gtirloni• 13 years ago

France could be using US components which contain a backdoor and never notice it. Seems perfect plausible.

The other theory that a competitor planted a spy device and nobody noticed is even more troublesome. So my satellite supplier has shaky security procedures and I might end up getting compromised products? Not good.

While I was reading the article one question that kept coming back was who is this unnamed source. It looks much more like a power play than anything else... but given the recent NSA disaster, anything seems possible.

bane6• 13 years ago

I'd probably bet a dollar that there was nothing at all on the satellite and the current political climate re: NSA is simply being taken advantage of.

robmcm• 13 years ago

Why do you assume it's hardware. I imagine the hardware to send the signal is already there, they just need to add some software to proxy it to https://goodies.nsa.gov

If they are building the ground station tech, then there could be nothing at all on the satellite.

gaius• 13 years ago

It'd be like somebody sticking an extra hard drive or NIC in the computer you built at home and you not noticing it.

No, it'd be like you buying a NIC and installing it without realizing there was a backdoor in its firmware. Not everything in a satellite is a one-off custom piece, a lot of it is COTS and integrated by the builders.

bane6• 13 years ago

There's a very strong bias here on HN that everything is software. But Satellite assembly is very much a HW thing as well. Attributing whatever it is to a specific country lends itself to being hardware more than software, probably some parts that have very few or one supplier so the country of origin can be determined.

gajomi• 13 years ago

My understanding is that the physics of imaging satellites is pretty precise, even a few ounces bias on one side can make the whole thing useless.

I am having a hard time thinking about what you might mean by this. I have no doubt that the imaging platform itself must be machined and assembled to high tolerance, but this is a matter of dimensions rather than mass. What kind of problems could be created by adding a little bit of mass? It may change the rigid body dynamics but that should be easily corrected in software. Care to elaborate?

bane6• 13 years ago

My university physics prof was a retired satellite engineer for NASA. I don't really understand the specifics, but he took a class period one semester to go over the difficulties of building devices that work correctly in zero-G, because sometimes effects that are ignored on Earth have major impacts in space. Among those things is a requirement to balance the satellite to within very small tolerances using some pretty precise measuring devices. I don't remember the exact precision, but it was some fraction of a gram.

He gave an example of a program he worked on (an environmental imaging satellite) where the circuit created by the electrical bus was geometrically configured (accidentally) in such a way that a slight magnetic field was generated in part of the spacecraft. This part of the spacecraft would interfere with the Earth's magnetic field and produce some impossibly small force on that part of the spacecraft, sending it into a very slow, unintended, roll. The force produced was impossibly small, he used the analogy of a down feather from a baby parakeet resting on your hand. The result would have been that the spacecraft would have used all the mechanical energy in its flywheels trying to stay stable, and then used all of its maneuvering fuel and become useless in just a few days. It was caught during some sort of balance test and they had to reengineer the circuit to produce a magnetic field in the opposite direction to cancel out the effect.

He gave another example where an instrument package was delivered at the wrong weight due to a change in some insulator. I can't remember if it was too heavy or too light. They had to add small weights to a different part of the spacecraft to maintain balance. IIR he said it took them several weeks to get the weights in the right positions to pass the mass balance tests on various axes.

I have no idea how accurate this is, but I thought it was an interesting and not-intuitive insight into how things in space work differently than on Earth.

He had other interesting stories about thermal management issues and other similar.

Daniel_Newby• 13 years ago

You forget that each subcontractor writes the specs for its modules. So Subcontractor X specs theirs as being grossly overweight and overpower. The system integrator bitches them out but budgets for overages. After a reasonable amount of time has elapsed, Subcontractir X reveals a miracle: their wonder engineering team has got the module nearly down to the target budget. Attaboys are dispensed to the worker bees, champagne to the management, and the spy module gets installed.

thirdsight• 13 years ago

I doubt this is possible. Every item that goes up is assembled and signed off piecemeal so every bit of hardware will be checked by multiple eyes. The buyer will have people on site checking this. From a software perspective, things are a little more uncertain but the workflows are tightly locked down. It would be extremely difficult to get anything shipped which isn't known about by everyone. Even attempting this is illogical.

I agree with the assertion that this is to secure a better deal.

(I wrote software to manage assembly and versioning of components on space and military equipment).

bane6• 13 years ago

Right, so I'm guessing that there are two possible explanations:

1) There is something (HW or SW) on the satellite and it was installed with full knowledge of the assembly group.

2) There's nothing unusual on the satellite and something else, politics perhaps, are at play here. I wouldn't count out a desire to not have U.S. sourced parts on a military bird. Just like the U.S. doesn't want to have Chinese sourced hardware (even if it's just door handles).

drdeadringer2• 13 years ago

I had the thought that perhaps how folks are more willing to call the US out on practices that have up-to-now been accepted wholesale or common practice?

salient2• 13 years ago

Why go through the trouble of accusing them of implanting a backdoor, if all they wanted is to review other countries' offers, which they're doing now anyway (Russia, China)? Are you saying that now they will go back, and say "ok, since you removed the backdoor, we're going to accept your 30 percent discounted offer."? That seems highly unlikely.

If anything Russia and China will charge them more than the French now, to "guarantee" there's no backdoor, and since they are in a better negotiation position now than they would've been if UAE reviewed their offers pre-accusing France/US of backdooring the other offer.

jccooper• 13 years ago

I like your entirely-appropriate scare quotes there. I can't see any reason to believe that Chinese or Russian hardware (or French for that matter) would be any less likely to be backdoored. I wouldn't trust any of it further than I could audit it myself--which makes it a tricky situation for second- or third-party users, since auditing the internal state of modern electronic gear is difficult-to-impossible. You can audit the communications, and hope you can detect any out-of-spec activity, but that's not easy either.

There's more political maneuvering going on here than any legitimate technical concern.

DateK• 13 years ago

Do not they having cushons, overprovisions, dummy weights, tolerance ranges to account for unexpected spec changes?

I imagine the systems are very complex, so the components are made modular, defining functionality and specs (size, weight, mass balance) and letting the implementation details to subcontractors.

While the subcontractor fullfills the contractual functionality, any eastereggs can be discovered only in a very late phase (qc, assembly), upon delivery.

The wording "discovery was reported" can be read as if it was a surprise discovery for all.

junto• 13 years ago

Meanwhile heads are rolling in the French Ministry of Defence, as it slowly dawns on them that they have used the same US spy components in their own satellite systems, and replacing them would cost billions of Euros.

Eye_of_Mordor3• 13 years ago

Well, this could be the catalyst for a resurgence in EU industry. Do it yourself or get exploited by someone else?

Eye_of_Mordor3• 13 years ago

Everyone is quite sensibly reviewing their US tech relationship and either going elsewhere or asking for an 'NSA tax'.

peteretep• 13 years ago

Thankfully alternative suppliers like Russia and China have such spotless reputations when it comes to espionage.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

Sure, but Im not sure we can legitimately accuse them of all the things we have proof the NSA have gotten up to.

See, thats the problem for the US right now, we can play the proof game. Right now we know what the NSA and US get up to. Its no longer the wild speculation of the foil hat brigade. Its fact now. Where as, with everyone else, we have relatively small cases and speculation. So, if you have a choice, and you know absolutely that one supplier cant be even slightly trusted, why would you use it? How could you justify the spending and choice? You cant. If anything went wrong, or political alliances or policies change, well, you don't have a leg to stand on. Your career and reputation are over. You bought from a known bad actor. You cant deny it. So, you have to look else where. At the very least, at this level, you have to make one hell of a case to select US technology right now.

msantos• 13 years ago

US Air Force using counterfeit Chinese parts [1]

s/counterfeit/backdoored/

[1] http://rt.com/news/us-air-force-counterfeit-electronics-879/

kmfrk• 13 years ago

And you thought you hated debugging.

leephillips• 13 years ago

The most troubling aspect of this story, for me, is that the civilized world is providing this class of technology to countries like the UAE.

gbog4• 13 years ago

Not sure the world you are talking about really qualifies as "civilized", but I agree with the sentiment. UAE, except for the oil, should be a few dunes of sand with a few tribes, not sure what for they would need war satellites.

XorNot4• 13 years ago

You may not have noticed, but none of the countries in the middle east like each other very much and satellite surveillance is kind of a big strategic deal...

RRRA• 13 years ago

Check out this 30c3 video for more strange facts about US and space ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTVgPw7TR_k

Mankhool• 13 years ago

This may just be postering on the part of the UAE Government to get out of the deal, because they have been offered better terms from elsewhere. A relative in the US who was a very small military contractor delivered a radar system to the UAE Government last decade - on time, and on budget - only to be told that they didn't want it anymore and since they didn't want it, they were not going to pay for it. The company could not tolerate that loss and went bankrupt.

leoedin• 13 years ago

If the article is correct (that this has been "discovered" rather than already known about, but not considered an issue until now), my suspicion is that they've discovered that aspects of the satellite's systems are under ITAR control.

ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) applies to almost everything space related that originates in the US, passes through the US, has input from US citizens or is produced by a US based company. It's very easy for something to become subject to ITAR, and once something is considered to be subject to ITAR it's practically impossible to undo. It's possible that they've recently done an audit on the systems used (which are numerous and sourced from hundreds, perhaps thousands of suppliers) and found that something which was previously considered to be ITAR free could actually be subject to ITAR.

Violation of ITAR by a company can result in huge fines or trade sanctions, and the only way to avoid them is not operate at all in the US, or even deal with US companies. I'd imagine that the only people in the space business who don't care about ITAR are the Chinese and Russians.

tanzam75• 13 years ago

Avoiding US companies isn't enough. Even the Europeans cannot manufacture an ITAR-free satellite, because they are not completely self-sufficient.

Until last year, you used to be able to buy ITAR-free satellites from Thales Alenia. However, the US State Department aggressively went after the American suppliers -- one of them got fined, and some previously-unrestricted components are now ITAR-controlled. That was the end of Thales Alenia's ITAR-free satellite.

If you want an ITAR-free satellite, you have to buy it from Russia or China. Those are the only two countries that have the capability to build a satellite without using any US components.

eliteraspberrie• 13 years ago

The reality is not as dramatic as reported. A part of the satellite (probably the radio) was outsourced by the French to a US company. So naturally the US could intercept that satellite's communications.

There are various types of French satellites: those carrying data which is protected from eavesdropping by anyone including the US, and those carrying data for NATO. The former are destroyed at the end of their life, the latter are up for sale. In other words, satellites that are protected from eavesdropping by the US are never for sale.

The UAE, like all Gulf monarchies, is entirely dependent on the US militarily and strategically. This political stunt is for domestic consumption.

downer86• 13 years ago

But no one has asked the real question.

The real question is:

  Why the fuck does the UAE even need spy satellites?

Seriously. What the fuck are they even spying on?

French-UAE Intel Satellite Deal in Doubt – US Parts Raise Security Concerns

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