Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

Did the gooks just get back from vacation or something? Propaganda seems to me flying left and right lately, check out this story.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html

Here is my response I posted in the forum I originally found this article:

I think you guys should consider that this story is entirely
fabricated. First of all, it is one of those stories where it happened
because the government said it happened, unless you want to take the
risk of trying to hack one of these yourself, you could probably go to
Nevada and do it. At first glance I see two underlying points in this
article.

1. The Iranians are using the internet to fight us. We have already
seen this theme before with the Iranians hacking Twitter and other
things. As with this story, all of those stories are of the same nature
to where there is no good way to verify the information and we are
supposed to trust them that it happend.

2. The military needs more money to prevent this type of thing from
happened. This seems to be absurd to me, encryption is not very
expensive, these drones are extremely expensive. Find one IT
proffesional who will broadcast sensitive data accross a public or
wireless network without encrypting it.

The government generally does not pass restricing legistlation
overnight, the spend months and years building up propaganda to win
support for the cause. The government generally does not admit to their
screwups unless there is an agenda behind it. According to them we
have flawless gods running the economy who can sell billion dollar
bailouts, yet the people who designed and planned the deployment of
these drones did not bother to use encryption because it wasn't in the
budget.

I found this with a quick google search on government network
encryption:

http://www.cipheroptics.com/government/

"Local, state and federal agencies have long relied on CipherOptics
to
protect their data in motion. These organizations, including defense,
intelligence and civilian agencies, know that CipherOptics' data
protection solutions will keep their data secure while helping them
comply with government regulations, such as FISMA,
DoD
8100.2 and HIPAA.


With CipherEngine,
government agencies have the power to protect data in motion wherever,
however and whenever they want, without changes or disruptions to
their
network, their infrastructure, or their operations. Our unique
approach
to policy definition, key distribution and global encryption management
provides unprecedented data protection across virtually any network
and
computing infrastructure."

Now look at the wikipedia page for this software called skygrabber that was used to view the live feeds, it is very supsicious - there is more information on the software being used in Iraq than there is on the actual software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyGrabber
The official site for skygrabber is offline.

I saw something about this late last year as well, and couldn't figure out what the agenda was that is in-play. I don't think it's funding, because DOD has no real opposition to funding requests. Further, Ahmenejahid is an establishment intelligence guy, so he doesn't do anything unless instructed to and the Iran is our enemy stuff is bogus. Additionally, the US Military never ever would release information about a compromise of their weapon systems, as it publicly displays weakness, and breaches of this type are typically code-word clearance on a need to know basis only.

This is an interesting puzzle, and I'm afraid I don't have an tangible answers. But this certainly is a good one to think on. Going to have to ponder it.

Good post!

The one thing is that it hints towards locking down the internet and I think they have been building up that theme for awhile.

Kraig wrote:

The one thing is that it hints towards locking down the internet and I think they have been building up that theme for awhile.

I'm not seeing it. What sort of lockdown are you thinking?

And before you answer, let me say that I don't see any reason why they would want to curtail use of the Internet. In my view, it is the greatest mass manipulation tool ever created, allowing them to reach down to an individual level. In fact, what I see is every attempt possible to extend the reach of the Net through $100 Laptops, Solar Power, and ubiquitous wi-fi. Their scientific methods of manipulation are so sophisticated online, that universal Net access seems to pose no risk to them.

Thoughts?

Well I'm thinking they might lock down the internet like radio and TV is right now, where we wouldn't have access to a site like this.

Kraig wrote:

Well I'm thinking they might lock down the internet like radio and TV is right now, where we wouldn't have access to a site like this.

My concern is that they will remove anonymity, and then employ their techniques of peer pressure and "correctness" behavior management. I understand that when traveling in Italy, one much produce their passport before allowed on the Internet at a cafe, or elsewhere (but I only heard this from one source and haven't confirmed it).

But please don't let me stop exporation of this matter. I do think you have properly identified an agenda here, I just don't see a clear object yet. But it will become clear, it always does.