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Hezbollah Hacked Israeli Military Radio
florescent_beige writes, "Newsday is reporting that Hezbollah was able to monitor secure Israeli military communications, perhaps using technology supplied by Iran, during the recent Lebanon war. A former Israeli general, speaking anonymously, called the results 'disastrous' for Israel. The story reports that an anonymous Lebanese source said that Hezbollah might have taken advantage of Israeli soldiers' mistakes in following secure radio procedures. The radio gear uses frequency hopping and encryption." The article identifies the Israeli communications equipment as the US-designed Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System.
For those interested, here is the original article. Compare for yourself the various comments.
Still a good reading and it explains why Hezbollah could say they had killed X number of troops or destroyed Y tanks before the Israeli military admitted to the losses. They were listening to the Israeli transmissions from the battlefield!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Frequency hopping by itself is not secure. It does add value to the system by making it more difficult to intercept and jam communications. By placing the entire output power of the radio into a limited frequency band, you get better range and jamming resistance. By both radios being on the same hopset, the receiving radio already knows where to tune its receiver and seek the new signal. From the linked description, SINCGARS has 2320 channels, so monitoring all of them at a given time becomes difficult. However, SINCGARS is a fairly old technology, so the chipping frequency is low compared to more modern radios.
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What a shortsighted (and incorrect) view of the situation.
The arab Shia are the largest ethnic/religious group in Lebanon, at 30% (if you break it down by religion only, the Christians are larger, although there are many different, and sometimes conflicting, Christian sects). Hezbollah is their largest *political party*, which has a private militia that is more powerful than the Lebanese army (largely thanks to Iran and Syria's generosity, but also thanks to extensive training in fighting the Israeli army since the early 80's). The next largest political party, Amal, doesn't have near their level of support. Of course, don't think too mildly of Amal, either -- they fought Israel just as hard, even during this war, although they don't have Hezbollah's resources. Hezbollah is not only a major political party, but is the country's second largest employer, mostly for its network of government services that it provided to areas that the Lebanese government was either unable to or unwilling to provide to -- schools, hospitals, etc. Public service activism is one of the main ways that the party wins support, even down to the local level. I saw a documentary recently where one Hezbollah woman talked about an initiative she started in which Hezbollah families would stock medical supplies in their homes. Whenever anyone was injured, they could come and get treated for free, so that even if the hospitals were destroyed or taken over, people could get care. By doing things like this, addition to helping their own people, they rally support for Hezbollah at the same time.
Hezbollah has a very tight military discipline. They've been using what's termed "fourth generation warfare" by US military analysts. It combines classic guerella tactics with modern weaponry and a unique "peer to peer" communications structure. Weaponry is buried until used, then restored immediately, always in numerous, small caches, making it incredibly difficult to destroy. Local cells operate in their hometowns or other supportive territory, and are able to pick and choose targets as will. Groups communicate with their neighbors to exchange intelligence information; critical information is sent through hardened channels, sometimes even through physical runners. Overall strategy and reserves are controlled by Hezbollah itself. In the 2006 conflict with Israel, the army was bogged down in dealing with the local cells, in their supportive terrain.
Contrary to popular myth, Hezbollah (unlike Hamas and the other Palestinian groups) prefers not to operate around civilians. Not for a concern for the civilians' safety -- they'll confiscate buildings to use as shooting positions if needed, whether their owners like it or not -- but for their own safety. Hamas operates openly as a sign of pride and defiance. However, by doing that, it only takes a tiny handful of defectors to point out to Israel where they are and what they're doing. Hezbollah, on the other hand, prefers to operate in areas where nobody is around to reduce the risk of being exposed by defectors.
As we saw in the last conflict, they're a very effective military, and it's a big question mark on how to deal with them. It's almost funny how the major Arab powers were defeated one after another, yet this tiny band was blowing up warships and taking out hundreds of Merkavas, in addition to maintaining a steady rain of over 100 Katyushas per day throughout the entire conflict. And now their popularity is soaring -- not just in other countries, but even in Lebanon, where they started the conflict. Check out these polls. Check out this as well.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
"Contrary to popular myth, Hezbollah (unlike Hamas and the other Palestinian groups) prefers not to operate around civilians. Not for a concern for the civilians' safety -- they'll confiscate buildings to use as shooting positions if needed, whether their owners like it or not -- but for their own safety. Hamas operates openly as a sign of pride and defiance. However, by doing that, it only takes a tiny handful of defectors to point out to Israel where they are and what they're doing. Hezbollah, on the other hand, prefers to operate in areas where nobody is around to reduce the risk of being exposed by defectors."
What the hell is this youtube video then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aur_DmTIw70
And this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68yOJVQA51E
I'm calling BS. Take your propaganda off of slashdot - I know how to use google!