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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.
This is different from the way U.S. intelligence services handle secrets. They maintained the fiction surrounding the Venona decrypts for 50 years. However, the Soviets found out about the project somewhere around 1948 from a spy. And, the U.S. then found out from one of their spies that the Soviets had found out about Venona. So both sides' intelligence agencies knew about the break, yet it was kept secret from the public. Even though the intel was germane to the FBI prosecutions of several traitors, including the Rosenbergs (who were very obviously guilty after having read the Venona decrypts.) The info could also have been used to verify Senator McCarthy's allegations (or prove him wrong.) Lots of good could have come from knowing the truth.
John
Given the subtext "Hezbollah might have taken advantage of Israeli soldiers' mistakes in following secure radio procedures"
It is far more likely that some ass hat of a soldier left a radio, a list of channels and codes, and/or other secret information relating to communication someplace available to the enemy.
When faced with two explanations, one taking an amazing amount of skill and luck, and the other taking a severe amount of incompetence... go with incompetence.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
FH is an Electronic Counter Countermeasures (ECCM) measure. It is intended to make the radios harder to jam (jammer needs to transmit on a wide band of frequencies in stead of a single frequency) and harder to locate through direction finding.
Communications security (COMSEC) is provided by a symmetric encryption module on the radios. FH/ECCM is emphatically NOT a substitute for encryption.
The article did not come right out and say that the encryption was broken. It is not unknown, especially in a time-critical situation such as a firefight, for users to switch the encryption off if they are having difficulty talking to another unit. The thought is that some communications, even non-secure, is better than nothing in the heat of the moment.
The more likely way an enemy gets into the radio net is to capture a keyed radio, even worse if they get a crypto fill device too. Reacting to such a compromise is a critical skill set for the signal personnel in a combat unit.
-"Pro Patria Vigilans"
Read the article very, very carefully, bearing in mind that since it's written by a journalist it might as well have been written by the Hezbollah PR 'n' Propaganda team.
What the article actually says about 'hacking' Israeli military radio communications is merely this:
Using technology most likely supplied by Iran, special Hezbollah teams monitored the constantly changing radio frequencies of Israeli troops on the ground. That gave guerrillas a picture of Israeli movements, casualty reports and supply routes.
So what precisely did Hezbollah do? Sounds like they merely verified that there was radio traffic on certain frequencies, and that it came from Israeli units, and then they were able to do a little direction-finding on it to verify where it came from. Look, imam! Funky radio traffic in the Bekaa valley that sounds like the usual gibberish exchanged between Israeli armor and base -- I'll bet there are Israeli tanks on Route such-and-such!
Well, gosh, big deal. Any amateur could do as much as easily. It's not right brilliantly clever to deduce when you get a lot of chatter on military frequencies in a certain neighborhood that there are military operations afoot in it. I mean, Hezbollah probably got as good or better "intelligence" about Israeli movements just by taking reports of survivors who counted the number of tanks that rolled over them.
Did Hezbollah actually decrypt communications, which would be an intelligence coup? Your logic argues pretty persuasively that they did not, because if they had they would have kept it a deep dark secret. In fact, they would have done their best to avoid drawing attention to their radio-interception program, lest it start the Israelis thinking. They -- or rather their Iranian paymasters -- would not have countenanced boasting about the operation to a damn fool journalist who would embellish it with wild speculation about 'hacking' secret Israeli radio messages.
Nor does the article actually manage to get anyone who might have known to say otherwise. It merely attempts to imply that they might have said it, or something like it. Hence statements like this:
The official refused to detail how Hezbollah was able to intercept and decipher Israeli transmissions.
A nice example of the old 'begging the question' fallacy, such as in the question 'Have you stopped beating your wife yet?' Maybe the official refused to "detail" how Hezbollah was able to decipher Israeli transmissions because, in fact, they weren't able to.
Or this:
But a former Israeli general, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah's ability to secretly hack into military transmissions had "disastrous" consequences for the Israeli offensive.
"Israel's military leaders clearly underestimated the enemy and this is just one example," he said.
Hmmm....wait a minute, the direct quote only says the military leader underestimated Hezbollah. And what's the mysterious 'this' to which the general refers, which is an example of the underestimation? Interception and radio direction-finding? Or actual decryption? We don't know. The journalist implies, in the previous sentence, that 'this' means 'hacking' into military transmissions, and that this means interception and decryption. But does it?
If the anonymous general were willing to be quoted saying quite plainly: "Ayup, Hezbollah decrypted our most secret communications, damn 'em," then you can bet your last dollar the journalist would have used that very juicy quote. The fact that he didn't use that quote, or one like it, means he couldn't get it. And I'm sure he tried very hard, with all the artful questions he could. The general just wasn't willing to say those words. Because, almost surely, they would have been false.
In short, I think the odds are good that this is just another journalist whoring for Hezbollah, 'cause it makes a scary exciting man-bites-dog story.
> resources. Hezbollah is not only a major political party, but is the country's
/. a few months ago). The one hit to a battleship was made by an Iranian guided missile system that was probably manned by Iranian technicians. It's doubtful that Hezbollah could pull that off on its own, though with extensive training they could probably man future missile batteries. It should be noted that the Israeli air force took out most of the Iranian missile batteries in about 34 minutes at the outset of the war, unfortunately not all of them however.
> 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
Yes, but it's Iranian money; Hezbollah is basically an Iranian shell company. One could argue that they've bought loyalty with this money. But there's evidence that some of this loyalty has been frayed by anger at the pointless destruction that Nasrallah's group instigated.
There's also anecdotal reports about people who were ordered to stay put in southern Lebanese towns by Hezbollah gunmen, apparently to provide more human shields.
> 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.
This may be true but many Hez fighters nonetheless operated extensively around civilians, sometimes in the same building but more often near civilian-occupied structures.
> 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.
As stated previously, there is also a lot of anger at Hezbollah for starting the conflict which wrecked people's homes across the south as well as parts of Beirut and set the country back many years in its economic development. Hezbollah has resorted to paying off returning families with $10K grants and crowing about its victory, while opposition editorialists have denounced Hezbollah for their reckless adventure.
Hezbollah certainly did not take out "hundreds of Merkavas"; I believe the number is more like 13, and the IDF is claiming that the Merkavas actually performed very well--probably would have done even better without this communications hacking disaster, and no doubt they have a lot more incentive now to get off their duffs and install the Trophy system (reported on
Given 4-5 more weeks, Israel would undoubtedly have degraded Hezbollah significantly enough that it would not be a threat again for a long time. Note how after claiming he would never cease fire, Nasrallah hypocritically sued for a cease-fire, and Israel's stupid government caved to U.S. pressure to call it off just when they were finally winning.
Privately, the Iranians are said to consider this war a disaster bo
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.