Bad SciFi movie Plot.... Terrorists hack armed drone hunting them.... NOPE- REAL LIFE !

[cbelt3]

OMG, the WSJ talks about it

I'm freaked out here. A communication link that has been insecure for over 20 YEARS ? A known vulnerability that has been accepted ? Great Caesar's Ghost !

[AAA]

Obfuscate. Just transmit multiple streams of pre-recorded video/data that will hide the real stream in an electronic haystack.

Send them wrong information. Subterfuge.

[SDGuy]

AAA wrote:
Obfuscate. Just transmit multiple streams of pre-recorded video/data that will hide the real stream in an electronic haystack.

Send them wrong information. Subterfuge.

The military isn't capable of that level of sophisticated thinking. Even if someone were to propose such a thing, it would likely take 5-6 years for such an idea to reach the point where it could be used in a real, live theatre of war.

[OWC Jamie]

A risk / cost assessment was probably made quite a while ago.


If it's an armed drone, do you take out anyone who is on the other side of a door if they open the door to look up in the sky to see if there's a drone looking at thier door ?
:-)

[Doc]

The drone intercepts mark the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas.

Hysterical.


We handed it to them on an open channel.

When a kid hears airplane radios through his $5 walkie talkie, we don't call him a "dark airplane espionage agent."

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.

...

Fixing the security gap would have caused delays, according to current and former military officials. It would have added to the Predator's price.

...

Today, the Air Force is buying hundreds of Reaper drones, a newer model, whose video feeds could be intercepted in much the same way as with the Predators, according to people familiar with the matter. A Reaper costs between $10 million and $12 million each...

Stupid jackasses. They're paying $12 million a pop and they don't think they have the negotiating-leverage to ask for a cheap RSA IC chip.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

[freeradical]

The price of those new Reaper drones is starting to approach the cost of an F-16.

[cbelt3]

free- factoring in the cost of the forward basing of an F-16, nope. They fly slower and much farther than a manned F-16. Really, they're the future of air to ground surveillance and combat.