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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / All Your Drones Are Belong To Us

All Your Drones Are Belong To Us

by John Cole|  December 17, 200911:48 am| 55 Comments

This post is in: Military

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This is probably causing heads to roll somewhere:

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

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. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

For whatever reason, as soon as I read this I thought of the scene near the end of Wargames where Barry Corbin says “I’d piss on the spark plug if I thought it would do any good.”

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Reader Interactions

55Comments

  1. 1.

    Dave Fud

    December 17, 2009 at 11:51 am

    Later in the article, it said they knew about it since the Bosnian conflict. Seems that they didn’t think it was important, or that others would figure it out.

    Why, exactly, do we always think our “enemies” are stupid?

  2. 2.

    Rathskeller

    December 17, 2009 at 11:54 am

    Good to know I’m not losing my ability to be astonished.

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    December 17, 2009 at 11:55 am

    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.

    Because those dumb wogs/darkies/camel humpers/gooks/etc. couldn’t *possibly* be smart enough to do anything of the sort.

    Sigh.

    Arthur C. Clarke’s _Superiority_ should be required reading for anyone involved in defense policy or procurement.

    -dms

  4. 4.

    GregB

    December 17, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Isn’t the lede buried here. Isn’t the big news a return of Iranian militias in Iraq?

    Last week General Petraeus was stating that Iran is arming the Taliban?

    How soon before Joe Lieberman sponsors a resolution with Jim DeMint demanding military action in Iran?

    The beat goes on.

    -G

  5. 5.

    ThatPirateGuy

    December 17, 2009 at 11:56 am

    @ Dave Fud

    Later in the article, it said they knew about it since the Bosnian conflict. Seems that they didn’t think it was important, or that others would figure it out.
    Why, exactly, do we always think our “enemies” are stupid?

    Because we are.

  6. 6.

    Skynet in training

    December 17, 2009 at 11:57 am

    Wait till these things start flying their own missions.

    I am Homer of Borg, Prepare to be assim… Hmmmmm, Donut!

  7. 7.

    Robin G.

    December 17, 2009 at 11:58 am

    The title of this post is why I read this blog, Cole.

  8. 8.

    PeakVT

    December 17, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    Some of its communications technology is proprietary, so widely used encryption systems aren’t readily compatible, said people familiar with the matter.

    The mind reels.

  9. 9.

    Joe Buck

    December 17, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    They aren’t encrypting the video link? That’s just incompetent.

  10. 10.

    ThatPirateGuy

    December 17, 2009 at 12:04 pm

    Remember that many militants are engineers…we have known this since sept 11th 2001 at least.

  11. 11.

    Kevin Phillips Bong

    December 17, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    Been on it for many, many months. Countermeasures in effect. Their system was actually quite resourceful and clever, so kudos. They needed more than just the software, and most of the time what they intercepted was of limited value, but it was cool to see what they came up with on their own using stuff you can get at Radio Shack.

  12. 12.

    Malron

    December 17, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    Man, we have officially segued from arm waving, frothing hysteria to butthurt sabotage:

    On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday, Howard Dean said he would vote for President Obama in 2012 but he would not “vigorously” support his reelection. “I’m going to support President Obama when he runs for re-election,” Dean, a former presidential candidate himself, said. “Not vigorously. I’m going to vote for him.” Host Joe Scarborough laughed.

    Yes. They’re going on conservative networks and talk shows to undermine their own party now. One year into Obama’s first term, the former head of the Democratic National Committee is openly saying he won’t help the guy he helped elect get reelected.

  13. 13.

    Joe Buck

    December 17, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    Also: “some of the communications technology is proprietary” should be read as: “we screwed up massively when we let the contractors design this thing”. These days, the open-source technology is rock-solid because it’s deployed everywhere and is under constant attack from black hats who are much more technically capable than the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Allowing a defense contractor to design something special that doesn’t follow standard protocols is a recipe for buying expensive crap.

  14. 14.

    Violet

    December 17, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    @Joe Buck:

    They aren’t encrypting the video link? That’s just incompetent.

    Heard this on the news this morning and thought the same thing. What kind or morans don’t encrypt the video link?

    So many of the people in charge of important things are just plain idiotic.

  15. 15.

    Hunter Gathers

    December 17, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    Some of its communications technology is proprietary, so widely used encryption systems aren’t readily compatible, said people familiar with the matter.

    It is easier to intercept these drone feeds than it is to hack into someone’s e-mail account.

    This deserves a ‘Bring On The Brawndo!’ tag.

  16. 16.

    Olly McPherson

    December 17, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    @Malron:

    Circular firing squad! OMG!

  17. 17.

    Hunter Gathers

    December 17, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    @Malron:

    Yes. They’re going on conservative networks and talk shows to undermine their own party now. One year into Obama’s first term, the former head of the Democratic National Committee is openly saying he won’t help the guy he helped elect get reelected.

    We are all PUMA’s now.

  18. 18.

    Martin

    December 17, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    @PeakVT:

    Yeah, this is what needs to change in the M-I complex. There’s a real lack of systems view in many, many places from exactly this described situation, to the introduction of new parts on equipment without consideration of sourcing/stocking/repair. The fact that the military doesn’t consider things like fuel economy to be important is mind-boggling. Do they have any idea how much of their logistics effort is dedicated to just hauling gas to the battlefield? There’s good and bad participants here, but some of the acquisition decisions are just stupid.

  19. 19.

    Zifnab

    December 17, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    Evil shall triumph because good is dumb.

  20. 20.

    Robin G.

    December 17, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    @Malron: Oh, Christ.

    Honestly, I’m on board with the DFHs about 90% of the time, but I really didn’t think they’d decide the Teabaggers were people to emulate.

  21. 21.

    wilfred

    December 17, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents

    Critical thinking, please. These ‘reports’ are like the subliminal messages flashed on movie screens.

  22. 22.

    Michael

    December 17, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    Obama’s time travel on betraying ‘Murka is awe-inspiring. Who knew he could reach back into the time prior to his term to arrange the contracting specs in order to help the terrorists win?

    And Howard Dean needs to shut the fuck up. The terrorists knew what they were doing when they failed to shut down ‘Murka’s 24/7 news cycle, where well-paid activists can say stupid shit on a daily basis.

  23. 23.

    jenniebee

    December 17, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    For the sake of our national security, it is imperative that we invade Radio Shack.

    If only we’d done something earlier, when they launched their Tandy offensive, it wouldn’t be necessary to take them out now.

    (I know that the terrorists were supplied by teh Intertubez, but Radio Shack has better targets.)

  24. 24.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    December 17, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    “I’d piss on the spark plug if I thought it would do any good.”

    Well… I think we can all rest assured that, at the very least, somebody somewhere is getting pissed on as we chuckle… either that or getting a raise… or a medal… or perhaps even a cookie… and a medal… and a raise…

  25. 25.

    stinkwrinkle

    December 17, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    Well, they remembered to encrypt the control channel. That’s a lot more important than the video feed.

  26. 26.

    Malron

    December 17, 2009 at 12:17 pm

    @Michael: I should point out that Dean’s comments were about the result of the health reform battle, not the drone news. Sorry if I confused people.

  27. 27.

    Eric U.

    December 17, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    the Pentagon fought against buying these things, and they were forced on them by the politicians. So there was no oversight during the development.

  28. 28.

    cyntax

    December 17, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    Why, exactly, do we always think our “enemies” are stupid?

    It’s an important part of our narrative: American triumphalism and all.

  29. 29.

    Kevin Phillips Bong

    December 17, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    @The Republic of Stupidity: At the very least it’s an OPR bullet.

  30. 30.

    Mike G

    December 17, 2009 at 12:27 pm

    The drones were rushed into production after 9/11, not fully developed or tested. I thought they would have gone back and upgraded/fixed the bugs by now, but I guess that questioning the inherent perfection of American weapons systems would be would be Objectively Pro-Terrist, Flag Pin of Insufficient Size, UnMurkan, Hating The Troops.

  31. 31.

    twiffer

    December 17, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    i’m assuming the reaction will be to try and prohibit the sale of the software used (only the specific app though, because there is only one developer of any type of software) so that video feeds can’t be intercepted. instead of, say, encrypting the feed or something. also, maybe ban lighters on airplanes again, for good measure.

  32. 32.

    Harley Furguson, the Tractorcycle

    December 17, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    This is probably causing heads to roll somewhere:

    Not to worry, they will only be very low-level heads, no one of any real importance need feel threatened.

    That’s not the way America rolls any more.

  33. 33.

    DecidedFenceSitter

    December 17, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    One moment while I put my InfoSec educations to something approaching a good use. Because the encryption processing requirements would require a significant boost the processing power and delay times on the encrypting and decrypting the image.

    That’s my best guess for why they wouldn’t take the time to encrypt.

  34. 34.

    Tsulagi

    December 17, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Those wily insurgents.

    Can picture one outside sipping his tea while watching the feed on his laptop. Then see himself. “Oh shit.”

  35. 35.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    December 17, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    Then see himself. “Oh shit.”

    Two words… ‘Tee’ & ‘hee’…

    Either that, or Tiger Woods talking to one of his mistresses… finally a GOOD reason for 500 channels of cable… and apparently, Tiger’s gonna need ’em ALL…

  36. 36.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    December 17, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    At the very least it’s an OPR bullet.

    I just hope that someone remembers to shout ‘Green balloon! Green balloon!’ before it’s too late.

  37. 37.

    PeakVT

    December 17, 2009 at 12:42 pm

    @Martin: Agreed. But the other thing that boogles is that the contractor didn’t exploit the problem for an upwards contract modification. That’s a standard trick in the defense contracting game.

    @DecidedFenceSitter: Even with today’s computing power? A commercial cryptographic accelerator isn’t that expensive.

  38. 38.

    Osprey

    December 17, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    600 Billion+ per year on defense and we get out-smarted by some cave-dwelling Allah-humper armed with something from the discount bin at radio shack.

    I’m surprised Fox doesn’t pick up those feeds and put on a show called ‘Survivor (the REAL thing): Afghanistan’.

  39. 39.

    DecidedFenceSitter

    December 17, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    PeakVT:

    Without schematics and such, there may be space considerations/power considerations/etc. Yeah, it seems foolish on the face of it; but I get nervous condemning whole sale for not encryption video data that needs to be live feed without a better understanding of what are the trade-offs.

  40. 40.

    Kevin Phillips Bong

    December 17, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    @DecidedFenceSitter: Yes.

  41. 41.

    Paris

    December 17, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    This is probably causing heads to roll somewhere:

    No heads roll. Its called cost PLUS for a reason.

    Now hand me some more cash and we’ll fix that right up for you.

  42. 42.

    twiffer

    December 17, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    @DecidedFenceSitter: okay, but see, if these are used for intelligence gathering, why not fucking encrypt the data? these are the same people who degrade GPS signals so that “sensitive” targets can’t be accurately pinpointed. who harped that aerial photos on google earth contained too much information that could be used by those neferious terrorists. and yet…we’re not going to bother to encrypt the live video from our highly sophisticated unmanned surveilance drone?

    think about the logic of it. we think it worthwhile to prevent the viewing of static images for certain locations: nuke power plants, VP residence, etc..; but we’re find not encrypting the feed from our spy drones? how does that make sense?

  43. 43.

    Cat

    December 17, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    Not to defend anyone here and luckly I’m not privy to the actual details of the drones so I’m free to speculate.

    When you are designing a system that has to be hardened, fit into a certain sized space AND do it with 2000 era electronics you don’t have the computing power to encrypt video signal with enough detail to be usable by an operator.

    If the signal is encrypted you have to develop a proprietary protocol for transmitting it as any noise will ruin whole encryption blocks. So you are now adding more over head to the signal, either extra data for error correction, which you have to compute on the drones limited CPU, or you are adding the ability to retransmit data fast enough to still keep the signal usable by the operator.

    They could now retrofit the hardware onto the drones I imagine, either upgrade CPU or an encrypted link for the video, but in 2000 when these things were being made I seriously doubt it was an option.

  44. 44.

    Kevin Phillips Bong

    December 17, 2009 at 1:05 pm

    @Cat: Also yes.

  45. 45.

    Cat

    December 17, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    @Cat: One other aspect is heat load of all this hardware. Electronics fail when they get to hot. And all that heat probably would make it stand out like sore thumb if you were looking for the drone.
    I’m not sure how well you can dissipate heat from inside the drone and still keep it flyable and maintain the integrity of the electronics inside it.

  46. 46.

    Kevin Phillips Bong

    December 17, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    @Cat: Less of an issue than your other thoughts. Aircraft have a very good supply of (ram) cooling air and operate at altitudes that provide a much lower outside temp.

  47. 47.

    tootiredoftheright

    December 17, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    @twiffer:

    Nations with dedicated intel people whose jobs it is to look at these photos and be able to tell what is what when the google earth images have the address data is not applicable to the same situation. Plus these nations would deploy people to see what in the images was actually what they were thinking it would be.

    The drone footage unless the insurgent had the data to know where the drone was he wouldn’t be able to tell what the drone was looking at. It’s like looking at the x-ray scanners at the airport most everything is baffled at how the operator can spot anything in the image what so ever.

    Also even if the insurgent with the laptop knew what the drone was seeing due to the structure of the insurgency being able to inform on it to the ones being observed is very very difficult in real time conditions.

  48. 48.

    "Fair and Balanced" Dave

    December 17, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    What kind or morans don’t encrypt the video link?

    The lowest-bidding contractor.

  49. 49.

    The Moar You Know

    December 17, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    One moment while I put my InfoSec educations to something approaching a good use. Because the encryption processing requirements would require a significant boost the processing power and delay times on the encrypting and decrypting the image. That’s my best guess for why they wouldn’t take the time to encrypt.

    @DecidedFenceSitter: A good guess, sadly you are wrong. The real reason seems to be that the cost of encrypting the video (remember, the control channels are already encrypted) would have cost Lockheed Martin too much fee money (what you non-guvvies call profit), and so therefore they didn’t do it.

    My cell phone has better video encryption than the chief weapon against the terrists. I feel so much safer.

  50. 50.

    DecidedFenceSitter

    December 17, 2009 at 2:21 pm

    @The Moar You Know:

    Actually, I just came on to eat my crow.
    Predator drones use less encryption than your TV, DVDs

    Key Paragraph:

    The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The US government has known about the flaw since the US 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.” […]
    _
    After finding various laptops containing hours of recorded drone footage, the military has at last moved to encrypt the downlink between the drone and ground control, but there are problems. Not with encryption technology, which is robust, but with the fact the military 1) did not use encryption at the beginning and retrofitting is hard, and 2) the Predator’s maker uses some proprietary communications gear, so off-the-shelf encryption tools don’t all work.

    So yeah, standard FUBAR planning.

  51. 51.

    Martin

    December 17, 2009 at 2:22 pm

    @Paris:

    This.

    I have a friend that worked at JPL. For a while I thought the accounting alone was going to cause him to take his own life.

  52. 52.

    Kevin Phillips Bong

    December 17, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    @DecidedFenceSitter: General Atomics is extraordinarily intent on keeping proprietary stuff to themselves, and as a result has denied us a new (badly needed) cockpit, advanced data processing functions and all sorts of other stuff that would rely on GA’s cooperation. To be fair, they realize that Predator/Reaper are the only systems of this kind they’re going to get to manufacture. Once the big airframe primes decide to jump into the RPA business (and they already have) GA’s going to get shut out.

  53. 53.

    Bituminous

    December 17, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    @tootiredoftheright:

    The drone footage unless the insurgent had the data to know where the drone was he wouldn’t be able to tell what the drone was looking at. It’s like looking at the x-ray scanners at the airport most everything is baffled at how the operator can spot anything in the image what so ever.

    They figured out how to pull the drone video signal out of the air but it never occurred to them to triangulate it? I kinda doubt that.

    Also even if the insurgent with the laptop knew what the drone was seeing due to the structure of the insurgency being able to inform on it to the ones being observed is very very difficult in real time conditions.

    Why wouldn’t a terrorist leader or warlord have his own ‘early warning’ network, where teams monitor those video feeds and aides are tasked to take calls from the monitoring teams on possible incoming threats? It’s not like they never heard of or can’t use hand-held radios, satellite phones, etc.

  54. 54.

    tootiredoftheright

    December 17, 2009 at 11:48 pm

    “They figured out how to pull the drone video signal out of the air but it never occurred to them to triangulate it? I kinda doubt that.”

    Cell phone signals you have to use several towers to triangulate. Any sort of signal you often have to use multiple intercepts to get an idea of where it is coming from and a mobile airborne object is a lot harder to track.

    “Why wouldn’t a terrorist leader or warlord have his own ‘early warning’ network, where teams monitor those video feeds and aides are tasked to take calls from the monitoring teams on possible incoming threats? ”

    Cell structure. The cells aren’t in contact with one another on such a basis. Makes them harder to get nabbed if they aren’t communicating with each other unless one guy goes off to do face to face meetings with another cell contact.

    This makes it hard for the network to be broken up and destroyed while also making it difficult to do major operations and respond quickly.

    To be honest Somalia should teach that a combat operation involving troops on the move is easy to spot so why watch the drones when you have no idea what the drones are searching for. Honestly even the people operating the drones the vast majority of the time have no idea what they are seeing (hence a wedding getting bombed) and usually it’s just busy work so the military can say “hey we get these drones flying around keeping track of the insurgents” when in reality the military has no idea who the insurgents are.

  55. 55.

    Nancy Irving

    December 19, 2009 at 3:22 am

    God, it looks very much like we don’t have a monopoly on good ole’ American ingenuity.

    Scary.

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