U.S. was Warned of Predator Drone Hacking

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Squad10

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ltjweiss

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what were they thinking, not using encrypted video feeds. this is a very unpredictable opposition, one week they will be shooting mortars off of a pile of rocks and a campfire, and the next week they are hacking live video feeds. unacceptable!
 

reedeb

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I am beginning to believe NONE of our security secrets are secret any longer. EXCEPT for us folks here in the U.S.
 

cifd64

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The article should state 'reconsider the use of encryption for Military use.' It is a very general statement and soon anything and everything will be encrypted. Boo for us.
 

brian943

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Perhaps deliberate?

It is quite possible some video feeds were left "in the clear" as bait, while others were not. While the clear feed drone exits the area, monitor reactions with an encrypted one and take appropriate action. This could also be a ruse to build false confidence in those that will be back to cut our daughters heads off. They are lucky I'm not in charge of ops against them.

Charles Bronson to Martin Balsam...Deathwish 4... Reloading ammo..... "Nothing is too good for our friends"
 
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N_Jay

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The inevitable "THEY" will encrypt, WE will decrypt. It will possibly make criminals of us all.

Let's not start THAT discussion, please.

Encryption aside, welcome to the world of government contracting.
It was an early 1990's program.
There were probably rational reasons for not encrypting then.
If you asked the team then, they probably would have thought it would have been redesigned or replaced by now.
Of course, successful programs live longer then intended, giving more time for the original flaws and/or compromises to become issues.

No big surprises, just more confirmation that the "Government" and the "M<ilitary" really don't havbe much that is technically supriour to teh commercial market.
 

Squad10

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Do to (in general) insurgent technology lag, I highly doubt not having end to end encryption had any effect on the outcome of the mission.
 

radioman2001

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Now that it's out about the hacking I'm sure they have taken appropriate action. Maybe some forget about the Motorola MDT debacle back in the 90's. Motorola said it couldn't be monitored, but when it came to light that it was, they merely had the FBI shut down the person who made it possible. Gave Motorola time to encrypt their poorly designed MDT.
 

cg

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I recall reading about this kind of thing in the first Gulf I think. There was a British citizen that found a feed on a commercial sat. Think the unencrypted feed was an error and security breach, he reported it to the British Military who passed it on to the US. It turned out that it was due to insufficient bandwidth back to the US. It stayed up for many months.

chris
 

texasemt13

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Some great Engrish on that SkyGrabber site...

So each satellite is to a certain point of the sky, but everywhere there can be a signal from him?

So you can imagine what territory can extend the signal, look at the pattern of coverage of one of the satellites.

In a symmetric satellite internet all Internet traffic, as the incoming and outgoing transmits through the satellite.

How does SkyGrabber work? As we have already been identified, responses to the requests come from the satellite. The satellite transmits data all users in one stream.

I could go on and on but...
 

kgb

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Bosnia SFOR-10

While I was Peacekeeping in Bosnia we had a manned aircraft (contractor) doing our surveillance. I found our intel analyst on 133.4 directing the video operator on the aircraft telling them the location, names and what they were looking for, I informed my OIC and we talked to the analyst. They knew their link was not encrypted and they said no one wanted to step up and sign for the secure voice equipment.
 

mobile1

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These Predator Drones are used along the U.S. and Canadian border all the time now ,so maybe I will have some new channels on my TV this winter. Ok maybe not because the CRTC will say no to me watching those US channels on my Canadian TV.
 

PeterGV

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Did you see that they MIGHT have received it off of Hughes commercial satellites? These being the same people who supply DirecTV (it's in the article linked by Lindsay).

That's nice. Freakin' HBO is encrypted, but the drone feeds aren't. VERY nice. Obviously, HBO is so much more valuable.

Arrrgh.

Actually, what N_Jay said:

If you asked the team then, they probably would have thought it would have been redesigned or replaced by now.

is EXACTLY what's implied by the article. Great. Maybe I'll watch Predator Drone feeds instead of HBO tonight..

Peter
K1PGV
 

313RADIO

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am i understanding correctly that the predator drones are uplinking to a unknown satellite and downlinking via unencrypted DVB-S ?????
i wonder if the predator drones hovering the canada mexico border are operating the same way???? maybe time to put up my ku dish and do some blind scanning....
 

iMONITOR

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It's remarkable sometimes how careless we are. How long before someone takes control of one and turns it on us? :roll:
 
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