perry753

iTrader: (2)

haha wowwww

smokey25

This. Armed forces/countries play games like this all the time. Going back to one of the first encryption devices, the German Enigma machine. The allies during WW2 played a long game of "We know your codes, we don't know your codes, maybe we do, maybe we don't, maybe we found that submarine on accident, or we intercepted your encrypted message, maybe we didnt.." They might let the insurgents think they have it figured out when they are really just looking at false info.

And no encryption is 100% secure

pete

iTrader: (1)

This isn't the predator video transmission that's been "hacked", it's pretty much anything with ROVER capabilities (AC-130 gunships, drones, F-16's, F/A-18's, A-10's).

Very very bad if you ask me.

Calsoldier

iTrader: (6)

My question is how did they discover that someone else was looking at the video feeds?

soggynoodles

iTrader: (50)

That skygrabber site is getting hammered

fizay

which is exactly how they can drop a 500 lb bomb within a window parameter of no more than a foot.

iLoqin

iTrader: (5)

I heard about this story while going to work...

A 29.99 application was able to hack and check out wut the drones see... that's pretty amazing how our US Military doesn't have some insane high encryption for weapons... I'm somehow going to believe that our military did this on purpose for some reason or another...

If this is true, then our US military needs to hire India.

smokey25

Encryption was basically invented by the military and intelligence agencies. There is a sculpture in the middle of CIA headquarters (where the nations top cryptanalysts work..) put there in 1990 that has an encrypted message embedded in it, and no one has figured it out. I find it almost impossible to believe the military are using poor encryption on something so advanced. It said they found drone video on a laptop... I can find drone video on YouTube.

This is probably some tactic to make the enemy think they have something special, when they don't.

1reguL8NSTi

Encrypting the drones is possible however it makes it far more difficult for multiple users to view the feed. The CIAs are very encrypted because they have no desire to share what they're looking at. Conventional drones are a different story however. The JOC/TOC will want a feed, possibly the "land owner" with joes on the ground and obviously the pilot. Encrypting all that makes the feed much slower. The tactical advantage given up by letting the enemy see his friends get smoked is negligible when all this is considered. Every system the military has while invariably have some system compromising weakness. This is the basis of all warfare. The soldier who digs is foxhole aims to his left flank knowing he's making himself more vulnerable on the right.

All this said however, I do know that they can encrypt whatever they want. They just don't often times because it frankly doesn't matter. The enemy's S2 (intell) network is so limited it has virtually no effect on the battle. Basically even if they do get this "information" they can't use it very well to their advantage except in, at best, a few limited circumstances.

pete

iTrader: (1)

ROT-13 would be better than no encryption, hell when they designed this they should've at least used DES. Nowadays you can encrypt and decrypt on the fly, back then some simple FPGA's or ASIC's could've been used for some simple encryption along with a rotating secret.

1reguL8NSTi

I've never understood why they can't use the same frequency hop system that the SINGARS uses with a repeater to give it some distance. If the Harris radios can use a satellite as an intermediary between the mountains of Afghanistan and Ft. Bragg why can't these?

guitar_player

Heck, the free (CDMA) cell phone you get at your local cell store uses FHSS (frequency hopping spread scpectrum.)

At first, before actually reading the article, I thought they intercepted feeds broadcast by the drone through a land based medium and was thinking why wouldn't they use satellite com. After further reading, and finding out that they used an OTS $30 software to basically hack into the sat system is just baffling. Even more baffling is the use of a public sat system...

Maybe it's ok to think that the enemy you've been fighting doesn't have much intel, but why dumb it down. What will happen when you start fighting a real enemy??

the cavemen have done it again...

1reguL8NSTi

It's the nature of the beast frankly. The enemy has a human intell. network that makes nightmares for us. The populace is their source and its the best source to have. Like I said, the military did this for a reason I can assure you. They didn't just wake up one day and say "hey, we should just forget about encrypting feeds to drones, that'd be a really great idea". No, there is a reason for it and I will guarantee it is far above the pay grade of every person in this forum, without question. Most of the people that ***** about "oh, what the hell, they should have had a system in place" are the same people saying "this war is too damn expensive, they're wasting all this money on stupid, redundant systems". At the end of the day, the drones are successfully smoking the **** out of terrorists around the world and with that being said, the system works. Now, it'll work just a little better. Or for that matter it won't change at all and none of us will be any-the-wiser and the men and women in uniform will just keep on keeping on, as they've always done, and do their jobs regardless of what the public thinks.