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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.
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
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.
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."
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.
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
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!
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