Officials Confirm Authenticity of Iranian TV Images Showing Lost U.S. Drone

jadler03 said:
Luigi,

According to an Iranian engineer. So the basis for your reasoning that Iran "hacked" into the drone is a news article that an Iranian scientist spoke to. Seriously? Is everything that comes out of Iran believable?

I recommend everyone just stop speculating because NO ONE on this board KNOWS exactly what happened. Unless you work for a government or intelligence agency and know what is going on (which you wouldn't post on here, anyways), you aren't providing any facts on how the drone ended up in Iranian territory.
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You're right - it just "malfunctioned" all on its own and failed to execute its program to return to base, and landed intact from 40k ft. Yes, that's plausible. :rolleyes:

You should continue to keep your eyes closed about the capabilities of those opposed to us. Keep believing the propaganda that they all ride camels and couldn't add 2+2.
 
Luigi59 said:
You're right - it just "malfunctioned" all on its own and failed to execute its program to return to base, and landed intact from 40k ft. Yes, that's plausible. :rolleyes:

You should continue to keep your eyes closed about the capabilities of those opposed to us. Keep believing the propaganda that they all ride camels and couldn't add 2+2.
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Sometimes we give too much credit to our enemies to keep our defense budget big. I could see it in some Congressionman making speech about how Iranians took down our UAV so we need to spend more money.

The parts I suspect form the CSmointor article is

cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel
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How do you cut off communications link of something thats flying very high in the sky?


the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.
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How can you reconfigur the drone's GPS coordiantes? I think I saw that in a 007 movie, a special device that skews GPS signals to make the reciever think they are somewhere else. If so, we shouldn't worry about Iranain having our UAV, but worry about about Iranian being able to skew our GPS signals.


The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.
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Didn't the article just say "reconfigured the drone's GPS coordiantes."

Yes, you should know our enemies and not all folsk in the middle east "ride camels and couldn't add 2+2" and many are known to lie regulary.
 
MemberLG said:
Yes, you should know our enemies and not all folsk in the middle east "ride camels and couldn't add 2+2" and many are known to lie regulary.
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Yet there they are, in possession of our super-secret intelligence-gathering drone.

Notice the date on this article:

October 11, 2011 - Wired

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/drone-virus-kept-quiet/

Officials at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada knew for two weeks about a virus infecting the drone “cockpits” there. But they kept the information about the infection to themselves — leaving the unit that’s supposed to serve as the Air Force’s cybersecurity specialists in the dark. The network defenders at the 24th Air Force learned of the virus by reading about it in Danger Room.

The virus, which records the keystrokes of remote pilots as their drones fly over places like Afghanistan, is now receiving attention at the highest levels; the four-star general who oversees the Air Force’s networks was briefed on the infection this morning. But for weeks, it stayed (you will pardon the expression) below the radar: a local problem that local network administrators were determined to fix on their own.

“It was not highlighted to us,” says a source involved with Air Force network operations. “When your article came out, it was like, ‘What is this?’”

The drones are still flying over warzones from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Yemen. There’s no sign, yet, that the virus either damaged any of the systems associated with the remotely piloted aircraft or transmitted sensitive information outside the military chain of command — although three military insiders caution that a full-blown, high-level investigation into the virus is only now getting underway.
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Or this:

October 7, 2011

But despite their widespread use, the drone systems are known to have security flaws. Many Reapers and Predators don’t encrypt the video they transmit to American troops on the ground. In the summer of 2009, U.S. forces discovered “days and days and hours and hours” of the drone footage on the laptops of Iraqi insurgents. A $26 piece of software allowed the militants to capture the video.
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Luigi59 said:
Yet there they are, in possession of our super-secret intelligence-gathering drone.

Notice the date on this article:



Or this:
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Two points to the man with the communications expertise.


To the USAF Drone Techs: Are you $%#*ing kidding me? Nice work, guys...
 
This is a little tangential to the actual discussion but I believe that it is representative of what TPG fears as our underestimation of the enemy. The author argues that our forces will become the targets of the expanding UAV marketplace by our enemies.

http://armedforcesjournal.com/2011/12/8513180
 
Luigi/tpg,

You are right that the cyber threat is a good issue to talk about. However, I don't think there is enough public information available to confirm/deny that this incident was a malfunction or exploitation/attack. No one on here knows exactly what happened in this incident. So before we go waving the flags and saying that Iran likely demonstrated a successful cyber attack on one of our drones, we should give more time. If they were successful, wouldn't we see more incidents like this in the future? That should be a good indicator/metric.

So yes, we need to be aware of what "others" are capable of, but we also should be aware of other contributing factors and political situations, in which Iran might want to expose/embarrass the U.S.
 
Luigi59 said:
Yet there they are, in possession of our super-secret intelligence-gathering drone.

Notice the date on this article:



Or this:
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Again speculation on my part. I am going go vague to maintain OPSEC.

With a separate system, you still need a connection to the UAVs to make any use out of key strokes. Active attacks are easier to detect than passive attacks.

Video transmisison is different from command and control transimission.
 
Something must have interfered with the "self-destruct" signal. Probably jamming.
 
There is a big difference between intercepting video transmission and successfully spoofing a GPS signal to an aircraft at altitude.
 
raimius said:
There is a big difference between intercepting video transmission and successfully spoofing a GPS signal to an aircraft at altitude.
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If only we could have a classified discussion . . .

The collective experience and knowledge of some forum members will make the classified discussion very interesting.
 
MemberLG said:
If only we could have a classified discussion . . .

The collective experience and knowledge of some forum members will make the classified discussion very interesting.
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That's what the FOUO/S/TS/SCI forums here are for. Oh, you don't have access? I see...
 
MemberLG said:
If only we could have a classified discussion . . .

The collective experience and knowledge of some forum members will make the classified discussion very interesting.
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Hmm...:scratch:

I kinda like living at home...

Not Leavenworth, Kansas. :eek:

Steve
USAFA ALO
USAFA '83
 
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