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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.
The real news is that this made it into the news. Not because it isn't news worthy but because it only makes sense to maintain a shroud of ignorance once you have actually cracked a channel of communication thus instilling your enemies with a false sense of security.
For instance during World War II, even after the allies had broken a German code or devised a method to figure out that day's cipher string, they would still go about their routine of acting like they didn't know what the Germans were going to do. Meaning that if a cargo ship was headed towards a line of submarines, they might find it best to sacrifice that cargo ship at the possibility of saving a warship later in the day. If they responded directly to communications, the Germans would continue to change the code or investigate ways to improve their encryption methods and upgrade Enigma. Necessity breeds innovation and you don't want your enemies feeling a strong necessity for better encryption. I'd like to cite my source but I don't believe Simon Singh's The Code Book is available online and that's where I read this.
How interesting that Hezbollah would have the shortsightedness to let this crucial knowledge publicly available. However, this can be expected when the primary morale boosting for troops and citizens is bragging about your capabilities. I highly doubt they consider the conflict over and suspect that Isreal will now heavily ramp up its encryption & security to the highest standards since I believe that's one of the few things the United States will not export to them (see Phil Zimmerman's FBI case file on exporting encryption programs to foreign soil).
As the department this summary is coming from reveals, guerilla warfare depends heavily on information like this. I'm surprised it's gone public that they had access to it.
My work here is dung.
Is there any reason to consider frequency hopping secure, or is that simply adding "security through difficulty"? I understand it has certain resistance to jamming, but couldn't a sophisticated outsider simply have a large set of receivers to monitor all possible hops?
John
Of course they'll say that they h4xx0r3d the Israeli radio. It's called PROPAGANDA. Unless confirmed, I'd call this FUD.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
There is a cease fire currently. The conflict is effectively over. Therefore, Hizbula is trying to get extra mileage by revealing this. It is probably not the most wise move since they might end up fighting Israel again in the future, so maybe keeping it quiet would have been of benefit. But there is a certain logic to revealing this. Basically they are saying "see we are not as primitive as you think and Israel is not as advanced as some people (especially in the muslim world) think - therefore defeating Israel might be possible". That's what they are trying to get out of it.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Well with 6 billion dollars in U.S. aid per year, I think Israel can afford new radios.
If Hezbollah actually had cracked Israeli radio codes why would they admit it? Isn't that just giving information to the other side?
The only purpose in saying this is to boost morale and cause doubt for the opposition. Neither of those requires actually breaking a code and Hezbollah is known for making boasts without anything to back it up.
Until their is actual evidence, or at least a quote from a non-anonymous Israeli military official, I don't see why I should believe this.
Just because it's on the internet, doesn't make it true.
Prior to the US IRAQ invasion there were weekly stories focusing around how evil Iraq is... Iraq "might" be responsible for this, Iraq "might" have helped with that... The sort of "Iraq hurts kittens and little children for fun" but more subtle kind of stuff...
Now we have weekly Iran stories... There is no real evidence ever... For example there was this wonderful "Iran plans on executing girl for defending herself from rape" story... Completely fake, no known source, but yet got the internet all up in arms..
I feel this is yet another one of these stories... No proof... Can't be proven either way, perfect propaganda.
I agree with everything you said, although I doubt that the U.S. really has many export restrictions on encryption gear to Israel, except insofar as they're worried that the gear could end up in somebody else's hands besides Israel and compromise the U.S.'s own capabilities.
This is because it's not like Israel is that far behind the U.S. in terms of mathematics, computers, or encryption, so not exporting to them wouldn't change their strategic posture much at all, and would just deny business to a U.S. corporation in favor of a homegrown one (e.g. IMI).
If there are concerns about exporting to Israel, it's probably more because folks here are afraid that the stuff will be resold and eventually make it to countries that are hostile to the U.S., not really because anyone fears Israel directly. After all, although it's never been publicly admitted, I think there's a very good chance that the U.S. has given Israel nuclear weapons -- I doubt we'd bicker about a few lines of encryption code (that they could probably replicate domestically) if they wanted to buy it.
As to the idiocy of giving away your capabilities if you've successfully broken your enemy's communication system, you're totally right (and yes, it is Singh that goes into much detail about this in his book). However, it may be that Hezbollah either doesn't have the internal safeguards to prevent this type of leak, or is more interested in the public opinion to be gained through bragging than in actual operational superiority. (Or, is so convinced of their own superiority that they don't care, i.e. they've fallen victim to their own rhetoric; this doesn't seem implausible.)
Based on the past few conflicts and the reading I've done about them, the Israelis strike me as being pretty good at doing tough self-assessments and changing the way they fight in order to avoid repeating mistakes. If there is another Israeli/Hezbollah conflict (and I have no reason to believe that there won't be), I would look for some very different tactics on the part of Israel. This is the way war works: you see the greatest changes to tactics and strategy as a result of defeat or near-defeat than you do from victory.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Maybe they haven't really cracked the code, they're just putting out false information to try to get the Israelis to switch to a different code. This would cause some confusion, thereby giving Hezbollah an edge.
If that's not the case, then someone in Hezbollah should feel really, really dumb now.
If you have access to your enemy's communications, the absolute last thing you would ever want to do is tell your enemy that you know what they're saying.
Of course, now the Israelis have to figure out whether the statement is an unwise boast, or an elaborate deception designed to look like an unwise boast. Such a deception would be even more wily if the folks leaking the news actually think it's true.
Thank goodness our country would never fall for such a scheme. Oh, never mind.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
If you know your enemy is eavesdropping on a method of communication, the prudent course is not to tell the world about it, it is to use that knowledge to send him *false* information, while continuing your real communication through some other (new) secure channel they hopefully do not know about.
One thing you can count on. They, or Iran, won't be able to do it the same way the next time around.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
But they didn't get their asses kicked. That is what has shaken Israel to the core.
Well if you have two of them at two known positions, you could probably get a direction based on the time difference between the signal's arrival at the two stations. Or maybe you could do something with measuring the signal's phase shift. I've never sat down and worked out the problem but it seems like it could be done, on paper at least.
Some Googling reveals that somebody at least has thought of the same concept (and got a patent on it already, although it was filed in 1977, so I think that means it's expired now), no idea if they've ever put it into practice:
Determining azimuth of a transponder by measuring a plurality of phase shifts. Tomasi, Jean-Pierre, United States Patent 4,110,754.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I agree. Iran did fund and supply Hizbollah during the Lebanon conflict. The claim by Hizbollah that they listened to Israeli communications during the war was probably true. No communication device is completely secure, and no military is invincible. Most likely, Hizbollah got their technology directly from Iran, or were lucky and captured a piece of Israeli communications hardware.
I visited Israel from the US on August 18, only 5 days after the cease-fire began. The northern part of the country was devoid of tourists, but the Israelis were not afraid at all, and were thrilled to see us. We saw rocket damage across the north, and Israeli tanks coming back from Lebanon. We also saw many off-duty 20 year old soldiers (male and female) at McDonalds with their M-16s. All were interesting sites that would scare the crap out of Americans. The Israelis are happy to have a soldier nearby, and the soldiers are required to carry their weapon at all times as long they are on active duty.
Seeing the real Israel gave me perspective that is not present in America. People here say "How you can Israel bomb innocent civilians?" Those people haven't seen who they are fighting against. The palestinians and arabs do not care about their land. They do not care about their people. They do not care about other people.
Israelis do care about the Palestinians... at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, which is run by Israel, 40% of patients are palestinian. Palestinians get FREE health care, whereas Israeli citizens do not. All nurses in the hospital are required to be bilingual in hebrew and arabic.
The palestinians do not want their own land, they dont want to do anything with the land they have. And, yes they do stand on top of their rubble and shout "we won". Because if they're not actually fighting for land or rights, then the battle itself is their victory.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
didn't Colin Powell have some equally-grainy black and white footage showing Iraqi ROVs that didn't exist?
Who's spreading propaganda?
You may be surprised to know that you're a part of the problem. Terrorism isn't anything special. It's just a mode of combat, the only way that a poor and backwards group of people can attack a wealthy nation located thousands of miles from where they live.
They aren't trying to exterminate us, they are conducting a war against us. Just like ANY war, one of the ways to end it is diplomatically. The war they are conducting has goals that they'd like to achieve, and only the most ignorant would think that they want to simply exterminate us.
I don't think that the average American would feel that our country has lost any respect at all if we tried to figure out what is pissing those people off so much, and figured out how to address that problem to remove their reason to fight. It's the only way any lasting peace will be achieved.
We could also do it your way and just kill them all. It's certainly a lot easier, since it doesn't require any of us to understand anything. We don't even have to vote. Plus, it makes great TV for Fox to play.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
That whole scuffle was Israel versus Iran-By-Proxy.
Yeah, obviously.
Personally, I love how the arabs can stand on the pile of rubble that used to be their infrastructure and shout "we won!"
Um... Notice how very few Israelis are actually disagreeing with that assesment? Victory isn't making piles of rubble. If you look at the larger picture, this was a victory for Hezbollah without a doubt.
The Israeli military is supposed to be one of the best in the world. They've fought a number of nations around them and absolutely trounced them. There was no way Hezbollah, some rag-tag little militia, was supposed to be able to stand up the IDF. When this conflict started, initiated by Hezbollah when the kidnapped those soldiers, Israel was brimming with confidence, setting their explicit goal as the removal of Hezbollah from southern lebanon.
Well that's not even close to what happened, now is it?
What happened is that Israel got hit very hard. They lost a lot of soldiers, and worse a lot of tanks. Their Merkavas are the most heavily armored tanks in the world and double as troop carriers to boot, but they got wasted by shaped charge mines and a more modern version of the classic Russian RPG. With good tactics and planning, Hezbollah was able to fight the ground forces of Israel to a standstill, taking what is for a guerilla conflict a very good ratio of casualties.
Sure, Israel destroyed a lot of infrastructure with a little "shock and awe" air power. Doesn't really do much other than harm the citizenry and piss them off. In the end, Israel couldn't do what mattered, and that's occupy the land that was and still is controlled by Hezbollah.
Make no bones about it. Hezbollah lured Israel into a fight at the time and place of their choosing, handed Israel an unexpected spanking, and sent them packing without giving up much of anything. They're stronger than ever now, both in terms of their support level and in terms of morale. The Arab underdogs beat the big bad Zionist bully, and you better believe others noticed. This little war is going to be studied for a long time, both to refine and improve the techniques used by Hezbollah, and to figure out how to counter them. At the strategic level, this was a stunning victory for Hezbollah and all the nations/groups that oppose Israel. It would be very foolish to view it otherwise.
Dumbest. Culture. Ever. And that's saying something on this silly planet.
Which? The one that declares victory standing on the rubble that used to be their infrastructure? Or the one that thinks whoever makes the most piles of rubble out of infrastructure wins?
The enemies of Democracy are
Funny how whenever someone we don't like is up to something, we try to link it to someone who we're just itching to bomb.
I saw a live interview on Sky News (in the UK) with their correspondent David Bowden during the war, in which he said that Hezbollah did not fire rockets close to, or from buildings. Instead they typically fired from olive plantations. About three seconds later the transmission was mysteriously lost. Obviously it wasn't what the Israelis wanted viewers to hear. If the media misled people about this, then what is to say they didn't mislead viewers over the number of tanks the Israelis lost? Propaganda is a key element of war these days, and nothing can be broadcast from Israel without being subject to censorship. You really think Israel was winning? Why is it then, that during the last days before the ceasefire they came under the heaviest rocket attacks of the war? Also, the Israeli army is far from being outdated and under funded, complacent and under trained perhaps, but not under funded. Do you even know how much they get from the American government on a yearly basis? Surely you must have been aware of the arms shipments, consisting of the latest bombs that took place during the fighting? It caused a bit of fuss in the UK at the time. Don't trust without question what you see on the news broadcast, they show you what they want you to see, with the slant that they want it to have.
Which war were you watching? The one I was watching had a bunch of right wing Israeli politicians in an unstable situation looking for an excuse to go to war and boost their popularity - but it backfired and turned into a month long recruiting drive for Hizbollah paid for by Israel and the USA - making both Israel and the USA look bad. The USA was left in the situation of paying for a lot of weapons, having no say in how they are used, having eveyone hate them as they pulled missile fragments labelled "made in the USA" off their dead kids and the USA having to pay some of the money to clean up the mess.
The thing I don't understand is the claims that they are all just agents of Iran and that Palestinians have nothing whatsover to do with it - that's simplistic and stupid. A news program in my country had to apologise for saying this, but it is true that Hizbollah has a lot of Palestinians in it and it is true that Iran will sell weapons to any group that they share any ideals with. It is as stupid as Nixon trying to scare the USSR into putting pressure on North Vietnam and thinking the place was micromanaged out of the Kremlin instead of a bunch playing China and the USSR off each other. There is no way this is micromanaged out of Tehran, but it is also true that there is some involvement. Most of it is Israelis and Palestinians fighting it out in Southern Lebanon as has been happening on and off for a long time. Syria is of course mightily pissed off from losing their territory and is involved as well.
Ragtag militia gets 100 Million dollars a year from Iran
Ragtag militia has advanced wire-guided anti-tank missles
Ragtag militia has advanced anti-ship missles
Ragtag militia holds 11% of the seats in parliament
Ragtag militia's political bloc holds 27.5% of seats in parliment
Hezbollah destroyed or damaged up to 50 tanks. Israel has 3600
While fighting to a standstill, Israel was able to occupy ground up to 30km into Lebanon.
While fighting to a standstill, Hezbollah was able to occupy ground up to -30km into Israel.
Israel controls the land held by Hezbollah until an International force relieves them.
Hezbollah didn't expect a war at all
Israel currently occupies the land controled by Hezbollah.
ROFL
I don't think that the average American would feel that our country has lost any respect at all if we tried to figure out what is pissing those people off so much, and figured out how to address that problem to remove their reason to fight. It's the only way any lasting peace will be achieved.
We already know what they want, it has never really been a secret. As Islamist extremists, their ultimate goal is to unite all the Muslim lands under a new Caliphate (an Islamic government uniting church and state), and expand its control to the entire earth. This means that they will have to overthrow many of the existing Arab governments to install clerical rule and Sharia (Islamic law). Their plan also includes retaking control of "lost" possessions, like Spain and the formerly Muslim controlled areas from Greece to Austria. Beyond that, they want to expand Muslim control to all of Europe, Africa, Asia,
What is "our" role in this? Their preferred outcome is that we all convert to become Muslims. That was Bin Laden's first demand in his letter to America.
There should be nothing novel in this. Recently, Palestinian extremists forced two Fox News reporters to "convert" to Islam after taking them hostage. There is a long history of this.
He also wants us to jettison the Constitution and adopt Sharia law, stop drug & alcohol use, homosexuality, sexual immorality, sleeping around, adultery, charging interest on loans, etc., etc. At least it would be easy to remember the penalty for many of these infractions: death, death, death, etc.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
What the hell is this youtube video then?
I'm calling BS. Take your propaganda off of slashdot - I know how to use google!
Footage from (apparently) Israeli military cameras that is so low rez that it is barely discernable?
Interspered with text telling us what to think?
Who do you think made those videos? Israeli military video footage doesn't just appear on the net by itself. The only propaganda I see here is your post and the claims in those dubious videos. On the other hand, the OP makes a plausible and rational explanation for his claims.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.