The loss of one of our top secret stealth drones to Iran in some manner is of great concern. But this is not the first instance in which they have interfered with our unmanned craft. Incredibly, Iran backed insurgents have been “hacking” the communications software on our Predator drones in Iraq air space since 2009. [WSJ]
By SIOBHAN GORMAN, YOCHI J. DREAZEN and AUGUST COLE
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.
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. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
With the known weakness mentioned above, two years would have been sufficient time to build more security into the software. In this reporter’s mind, the issue of concern is not so much that they have a piece of our advanced technology but that the Iranians have an ability to discover, track and somehow bring them down.
James Crawford
December 7, 2011
Very astute of you to remember the interception of the video feed. I was astounded that the video feed wasn’t encrypted but confident that the cammand feed was. Now it appears that our military was careless enough to presume that a feed from. A satellyte could not be overridden. This was profoundly stupid.
samhenry
December 7, 2011
Thank you for your compliment, JC. I appreciate it. With the state of our education system over the past 20 years, stupidity in any quarter of our lives here does not surprise me.
Then again, we could have “plants” in our ranks who are up to doing things that appear stupid to tip off the enemy.
James Crawford
December 8, 2011
If I may take the liberty of posting a link, see this video:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/1316714358001/iran-releases-video-of-reported-downed-drone
This drone has no visible damage. It was not shot down. It did not crash. It didn’t even glide in for a landing at some random location. The fabric around the base undoubtably conceals landing gear that has been deployed for a controlled landing on a runway.
It is probable that the Iranians (or more likely someone else who actually has satellite communications capability) hacked in to cammand it to land at specific runway. Of course if the USAF was not to stupid to encrypt communications, then we need to consider the possibility of an inside job. Did one of the USAF drone controllers betray the US by cammanding the drone to land in Iran for economic gain, or for political or religious motivation?