WASHINGTON -- 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.I find it astonishing that there apparently are people in our government who have never heard of the terms "electronic warfare" or "signals intelligence." Anyone in our government who does not understand that there are other nations who have a real interest in monitoring all of the various electronic signals to and from the drones in use and then figuring out ways to hack into them has mush for brains. There may be a mindset among some in our government that our opponents are a bunch of cave-dwelling goons who, other than using Kalashnikovs, prefer to live at the technological level of the 7th Century.
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.
That would be an incredibly foolish mindset to have.
But they have given NO reason to believe they have anything except incredibly foolish mind sets.
ReplyDeleteAnd hey, the whole intel community (including, one assumes, the sigint and elint types) are only there to be scapegoats for why things don't work, right?
(former sigint analyst here)
I bet my wifi network has better security...
ReplyDeleteWord Verification: gaman - Noun; incorrect spelling of the last name of Author Neil Gaiman.
Cripes, they could have used Secure Shell and kept the bad guys out. I seem to remember that was one of the things the computer "security" types didn't like, though, because a ten year old version of the protocol was crackable and sometimes you had to tell the server not to use it.
ReplyDeleteThis really is as stupid as it appears.
It is moderately funny, though, to think of a terrorist catching a video feed of a drone or Maverick targeting his hidey hole.
ReplyDelete"Hey... That looks like...!"