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Australia Cracked US Combat Aircraft Codes

SpamSlapper writes "Former defense minister Kim Beazley has told how Australia cracked top-secret American combat aircraft codes in the 1980s to enable the shooting down of enemy aircraft. The radar on Australia's US-made Hornets could not identify most potentially hostile aircraft in the region — they were set up for European threats — but despite many requests, the codes were not provided, so 'In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves.' The Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made."

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  1. OH NO! by stewbacca · · Score: -1, Troll

    Oh my lord, we are all going to die! A (somewhat) insignificant country (big picture) cracked codes using 20+ year old cryptography techniques. So in another 20 years they'll be able to crack today's encryption? I don't get this article at all, other than another lame attempt to make the US look bad.