$26 of Software Defeats American Military 534
reporter writes "A computer program that can be easily purchased for $25.95 off the Internet can read and store the data transmitted on an unsecured channel by an unmanned drone. Drones are crucial to American military operations, for these aerial vehicles enable Washington to conduct war with a reduced number of soldiers. '... the intercepts could give America's enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under US surveillance.'"
$26 is a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
Counting the cheapest part of the machine is silly.
Software is often free. $26 is a lot for software. The radio reception, etc. and knowing where to aim are all much more expensive and require skill.
It doesn't defeat them (Score:3, Insightful)
Defeating them would be gaining control of the drones (a really scary proposition)
This seems to be an information leak.. something that ought to be fixable by using some sort of encryption.
Or even by making slight changes to the stream format, since SkyGrabber seems to just be off-the-shelf software.
The Pentagon is full of idiots (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:but what are the hardware costs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anonymous Coward (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps the smart play would be to quietly encrypt actual data, while continuing to broadcast placebo or manipulated data in the clear.
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Insightful)
Security vulnerabilities happen, and are unfortunate and need to be fixed, and we really should spend more time and resources on caring about them; but that is all manageable software/systems engineering stuff.
Making important decisions on the basis of "Eh, our enemies are just ignorant mud farmers anyway, no problem", on the other hand, is colossally arrogant and extremely dangerous. Particularly, since the US currently has the world's highest tech and most expensive military, "Eh, they're just primitives, no problem" is a practically all-purpose dismissal of virtually any problem that you are too lazy to fix. That is a recipe for learning, the hard way, about every new asymmetric warfare trick.
Re:Sh..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't they understand that even the weakest simplest encryption, is 1000 times better than none at all?
So instead of leaking this to the news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hubris (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sh..... (Score:1, Insightful)
Not to be harsh about it, but think back to high school and college and ask yourself if you would describe the people who were planning military careers as the "best and brightest" of your class.
Re:Sh..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More important question (Score:5, Insightful)
If received and understood by the enemy in a timely manner, very useful information. But if it is just the image unencrypted and not GPS coordinates, etc, the enemy would have to have enough people watching the feeds to recognize the terrain that was being photographed... it's easy to see why this might not be considered likely and lead to the poor judgement to leave it unencrypted when the drones were designed, many years ago with less powerful processors available.
Re:but what are the hardware costs? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they can prevent me from watching porn on cable and satellite, they should be able to prevent these guys from hijacking the video feeds from the UAVs.
you have a good point (Score:5, Insightful)
furthermore, there's nothing to say they still can't do that, or aren't actually doing that already. in fact, a big story in the international press about how dumb the military is on these video feeds is a good cover. one can hope, anyways, that the military is smarter than depicted in this story
Re:All your drone are belong to us (Score:5, Insightful)
Sensationalist... i would expect this from a tabloid.
Title should have been: Unencrypted data broadcasted everywhere ... can be received by anyone!
The leap from that to "$26 of Software Defeats American Military" is quite a big leap in my opinion.
Re:Sh..... (Score:0, Insightful)
Don't tell the DoD. They've been paying $170,000 per license for that software.
There. Fixed that for you.
Re:Sh..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Some real kneejerk reactions above (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately there are plenty of assholes out there who will exaggerate anything in order to claim that they are more security conscious than the next person (and perhaps hope to get a contract for their company). But this is surely small war, no-one dead, move along please.
And those same people don't know (or remember) the first rule of intelligence:
Those who know, don't talk. Those who talk, don't know.
Gung ho (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to be harsh about it, but think back to high school and college and ask yourself if you would describe the people who were planning military careers as the "best and brightest" of your class.
Ahh, you are thinking of the one or two guys who were all gung ho but not especially bright and had delusions about being a badass commando. Yeah, my school had some too. See the thing is though that those guys aren't the guys running the military. The guys you are thinking of end up as infantry grunts or something similar and exit the service after a few years. I have a cousin who is one of those guys. Smart but classic ADHD and socially stunted and not someone I'd trust right now to be in charge of anything. But he served two tours in Iraq and now he's in college so I have hope for him.
The guys in the officer corps (commissioned and higher level NCO) are almost invariably bright and hard working and most of them that I've ever met didn't talk much about their interest in the military. I have a classmate who is a major in the US Navy who never gave the slightest hint he was interested in a military career. He was quiet, very smart, and I would have guessed he'd be an engineer but instead he's become a heck of a good officer. I have a number of friends who were graduates of West Point and Annapolis and I've been impressed as hell by each one of them. Smart, incredibly disciplined, and I'd hire any one of them in a heartbeat.
The US military is an incredibly complicated and large organization with huge budgets, difficult goals, and a huge workforce. If you think managing all that is easy and doesn't require tremendous skill, you are delusional. Sure they make mistakes just like any other large organization but their mission is also more complicated than most and if they fail, people die.
Re:Sh..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is the problem with military outsourcing in general. The goal is "make a profit" instead of "protect the country."
Halliburton is not in the defense business to defend. They're in the defense business to make money.
Re:IN soviet russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Mods. That comment may be redundant, it may be old and tired, but it is certainly not offtopic. In fact, in the grand scheme of frist psots!, it might be the most on-topic one I've seen in years.
Re:Sh..... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this has about as much to do with Army IT as IE vulnerabilities have to do with the Microsoft IT department.
Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
$26 software defeats American military? OMG, we've been beaten?
Oh, wait... you're just saying that insurgents have a tactical advantage in some missions because they've exploited a security vulnerability using $26 software. So maybe $26 software used as weapon aganist US military?
Ah... but the military discovered the problem in the field, and is working to plug the security hole. $26 software annoys American military temporarily.
Re:Some real kneejerk reactions above (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any real security risk in this? I suspect it is very small.
The risk to this is not a danger to troops. The risk of this is having a completely un-edited video source available to people who would have a field day if the official US proclamation of what happened was visibly different from the recorded video stream
Re:$26 is a lot (Score:2, Insightful)
Tend to agree, especially since current strategy is to only pick fights with opponents one step above the stone age, then bomb them right back into it.
If you're referring to Afghanistan, the US didn't pick that fight. If you're referring to Iraq, they are/were quite a few steps out of the stone age.
Slashdot is full of ignorant know-it-alls (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Proprietary software (Score:3, Insightful)
Must be good to live in a world where all life's problems can be solved by OSS software. Sadly, life just isn't that simple.
Re:Can't add encryption? (Score:4, Insightful)
As an engineer in the defense industry you probably also know how long defense systems live and how hard it can be to get upgrades pushed out into the field. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it wasn't technically feasible to encrypt the video stream at the time this system was first deployed and since then upgrading it has never been a priority for anyone with enough clout to make it happen. Now that its on SecDef's radar how long do you think its gonna take before this gets fixed?
Re:Seriously would it have been difficult (Score:4, Insightful)
And of course these drones have been operating for years, and have to withstand conditions well beyond what any off the shelf parts are rated for. Doing good crypto in a small package wasn't quite as easy twenty years ago when these were in development.
Re:Hubris (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:but what are the hardware costs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they're purposefully sending incorrect video feeds unencrypted, and this story has been disseminated to lull the enemy into a false sense of security.
Re:$26 is a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it did. Not that the Taliban didn't have it coming, but the USA was still the attacker.
If your friend shoots one of my family members and then goes and hides in your house, I'm not picking a fight with you when I come to drag him out. If you decide to get in my way, that's your problem.
The pathetic thing here is that Taliban, Al-Qaida and bin Laden are all still alive and at large, so it could be argued that the US actually lost, failing to meet its goals for the invasion.
By the same logic, Germany and Japan still exist today so I guess the US lost in WW2, also. Good thinking!
They do seem to be quite primitive, actually, considering how quickly their defense collapsed, and how few casualties the attacker suffered.
Frankly, the US could probably roll over the Canadian military tomorrow, just as quickly, while suffering not many more casualties. I guess Canada is primitive too, huh?
You're confusing American dominance for Iraqi incompetence, and then assessing their entire nation based on your misunderstanding. That's just silly.
Re:Seriously would it have been difficult (Score:5, Insightful)
...
You are a dangerous fool. Never use a one-time pad more than once, even for "light" security. Doing that turns the whole thing into a Vigenère cipher [wikipedia.org] and destroys all security. You might as well just XOR each byte of the message with 0x42.
Re:Sh..... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Halliburton is not in the defense business to defend. They're in the defense business to make money"
What?! You mean to tell me that Halliburton, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and General Electric are not staffed by monks who've taken a vow of poverty?
People who aren't in business to make money seldom manage to stay in business long enough to do anything at all. And I'd much rather contractors operate at a profit than be perpetual budgetary basket-cases like NASA.
Re:Sh..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$26 is a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, its a fine demagoguery you got there, but the actual reality was that the Taliban demanded to see evidence of Bin Laden's responsibility before handing him over (remember that Bin Laden is just a "spiritual leader" - read: "pontificating bore that talks hell of a lot but hasn't actually done much directly" as opposed to other, more hands-on operatives who worked out of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and, in the case of the 9/11 crew, Germany) and the USA flatly refused. Following which the USA invaded declaring any and all comers as "unlawful combatants" with no rights of any kind.
So to keep your analogy straight, you have a case of my friend showing up at my house saying that you are gunning for him, following which you show up with a box of explosives and demand that I hand him over or else "because he did me wrong!". And when I say "hold on for a sec, what proof exactly do you have?" you say "I don't have to explain myself to a non-human like you, far beneath my superior Manifest Destiny self! What I say goes or else! You got 10 minutes to comply!" and then set the bomb off 5 minutes later, killing my wife and maiming my kids, following which you get the biker gang down the street to help you rummage through and "govern" the wreckage. And so now you have two mortal enemies instead of one and not exactly what could be called a "moral high ground".
This is how the Afghanistan mis-adventure is seen by "the other side" and it is of little wonder that the fight will likely go on indefinitely, Taliban having quite a bit (and growing by many accounts) of local support and very able to present itself as the victims of a belligerent, arrogant, foreign, religiously-motivated, supremacist aggressor, victims who will defend their ancestral homeland, their religion and their "way of life" against that aggressor to the bitter end.
I'd say the odds of "victory" in Afghanistan for the USA are pretty much on the same level as those of all the previous Empires ... not entirely zero but any Vegas slot machine looks like a guaranteed retirement plan by comparison.
Re:but what are the hardware costs? (Score:4, Insightful)
frequency hopping != encryption
especially if you are the only transmitter in that spectrum nearby.
Re:Sh..... (Score:1, Insightful)
As long as you understand thats a generalization and not the rule. Most of the smaller private companies are quite good at what they do and deliver an excellent product.
Re:Seriously would it have been difficult (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Some real kneejerk reactions above (Score:4, Insightful)
Awesome point! And of course, since they've had access to these feeds for over a year, can we then assume that there hasn't been an incident where showing the footage would have disproved the US version of events?
Of course, they would be hestitant to tip thier hand that they've got access to the footage, but if they really caught us in a lie, don't you think they'd show it?
Re:$26 is a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh I see, so in addition to being the chief sugar-daddy and arms supplier to Al Qaeda throughout 1980s, the USA then proceeded to meddle directly and covertly in Afghanistan as soon as their "allies" won and the USSR withdrew, showing itself utterly duplicitous and untrustworthy to the locals ... and this is improving your case how exactly?
By that token the Nazis "won" WWII in 1942 ... I mean they occupied and held a lot of territory at the time, "preventing it from being used as a staging area by the Allies", no?
Yes, the time-honoured way of getting your ass handed to you: "fail to declare coherent, logical and testable goals, bloviate endlessly about 'progress' and 'democracy' and whatever other abstract and nebulous feel-good concept you can come up with, declare 'victory' and skedaddle home holding your bruised posterior, having met 'your goals' 110%! - whatever those 'goals' morphed into in the end in order to be met 110%". You did not seriously think you are the first would-be conqueror to come up with this?
You have an interesting way of defining "boredom", apparently measured in trillions of dollars, thousands of wounded, dead and maimed on your side and many more on theirs...
And yes, all the defenders have to do is to do what they always have done ... to outlast the latest Empire until it crawls back whence it came from. They have an ample precedent for that, although you are of course the Super-extra-specially-exceptional Empire, the American One, so everything will be oh-so-super-specially-extra-exceptionally different for you, despite no substantial changes in the general conditions of the whole affair. Just because America is oh-so-Speeeecial!
Which is pretty much a guaranteed loss for the USA as the "will to stay" (translated to real-life measurements of mayhem and treasury) is far, far, lower than "their" will to outlast you - they are after all fighting for their homes, their "way of life" (as they see it) and their religion (and "zealot" is too kind a word to describe most of them) - and all that on top of their vastly disproportionately lower cost of warfare!
No, you will leave because that is the only thing you can do. The alternative is "total war" and utter bankruptcy of the US Empire. None of the previous empires left because of nay-sayers either, they left because staying further meant Imperial Collapse (and some, like the USSR, waited a tad too long). No amount of Rah-Rah cheer leading will change basic realities of Afghanistan and the logistics of foreign conquests.
Re:Proprietary software (Score:3, Insightful)
Must be good to live in a world where all life's problems can be solved by OSS software. Sadly, life just isn't that simple.
They didn't have to use OSS.
How about using established standards?
Then the Army can drop in some off the shelf fix instead of having
to pay their sole vendor to custom code/design new software/hardware.
Re:$26 is a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
Now this is a classic case of Projection! Accuse your opponent of the very thing you are doing and then try to escape pretending that somehow defending your lies is beneath your oh-so-high-moral-standards!
Speaking of detailed explanations [wikipedia.org] however... oh but you probably meant this whiny quote form the US government "The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA." - oh so everything is now so wonderfully clear! You did not hand the brown envelopes directly to Bin Laden, you had a middle man! Therefore you soooo absolutely absolved of any culpability, yes Siree! After all if one hires a middle-man, one is automatically innocent of anything that middle-man might have done in one's name ... unless of course you are not an American! Then all the rules change, naturally.
Re:Sh..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Silly concentration-camp prisoners during WW2, falling for that lie and thinking the Allied forces were the good guys. Man, what a bunch of rubes, when clearly, according to you, they were no different than the Wehrmacht.
Or did you really mean some battlefields, or "the occasional battlefield"?