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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."
"Austria" is a friendly OPEC member.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Whoever arranged the procurement of those aircraft in the first place wasn't terribly smart. Who would spend Millions of AU$'s on something that in effect doesn't work, and not just some feature is missing, but the primary use of the thing is impaired, oh and the supplier wont help. As for cracking the codes, when can we expect the Australians to release the cracks? I hate the fact I cant use the F18 I bought on Ebay to shoot down Asia Pacific Rim based Aircraft..
Former defense minister. It's easy to be forgotten if you're too quiet.
Back on topic, this is what you got for not using open source aircrafts.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
The Americans kept saying they'd provide the codes, but never did. Pictures tall kid dangling candy over another kids head. "Here you go" kid jumps... "Sucker..." "Here you go!" kid jumps again... "Sucker..."
Infiltrated dot Net
It won't apply in Australian jurisdiction. Though I would like to see how well DMCA fares if the US ends up unable to export weapons systems due to customers going to suppliers who support their products and do not engage in strong-arm legislative programs to prevent such things.
does the DMCA apply retroactively? If so, then Australia can never step foot in the US again.
Well, keep in mind that there was a huge Aussie fad in America in the mid-late 80's. We were ALL surprised at how much progress they made at the time. If it hadn't been for the unfortunate "Yahoo Serious" setback in 1988, who knows what they could have ultimately done.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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So did they managed to crack the codes or did they spy on the US and somehow obtain the codes? I read TFA and still can't figure out which.
I expect it was they cracked the codes as seeing as "Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made.". I don't imagine the seppos would feel "intrigued" about being spied on.
'In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves.'
This is a massive violation of human rights. The US DOD has many Australians in it, who may have therefore been spied on by the Australian government without a warrant. Therefore Australia is a police state.
"Oh look at them, they're trying to crack our codes..."
"Oh look, they're actually succeeding. How intriguing!"
"Hey, wait a sec, they're pointing those missiles at use. I continue to be intrigued!"
The timing is not important - the story was told in Parliament as part of his farewell speech.
Kim Beazley, former opposition leader (crude US translation - Minority Leader combined with non-incumbent party presidential candidate) is retiring from politics, and with an election due soon, today was the last day parliament would be sitting before the election. This made today the last time he'll set foot in the parliament as a member of the House of Reps (hence farewell speeches containing a lot of retrospectives). During his time, he was Defense Minister when Labor was last in power (the party / coalition with the most seats in the House of Reps).
Because its more than 20 years old and historians can use FOIA requests to study this.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
because at the time, all Australian aircraft fuel was under seige by Lord Humongous in the desert, and Crocodile Dundee was MIA on a walkabout
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This reminds me of news reports about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It's meant to replace the F-16 and also be available for export to allied nations starting with the UK. Unfortunately for the potential buyers, the US government wasn't offering to share all the technical details and source code that our allies would need to fully operate and maintain the aircraft. With a quick Google search I just found this article from last year saying the US and UK came to an agreement, don't know what's happened since then. I vaguely remember the Royal Air Force and Navy threatened to cancel their orders and just buy Eurofighter Typhoons instead.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f35-jsf-program-us-uk-reach-technology-transfer-agreement-02495/Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
I actually RTFA and there is not information on how the Australians cracked the codes, how they spied on the Americans or how the Americans knew about this and why it was so intriguing.
It was to answer those questions that I actually read TFA, so tell me, what use is TFA without the answer to those questions?
Though this information has only been released 20 years later, you can bet that any country buying export aircraft from another is going to have their people make adjustments to both the airframe and electronics (including software) to suit their pupose. No one is going to pay a barrel of money for aircraft and not adapt them for their needs. They are also not going to say what they did (for a long while) as that info will no doubt be classified. Ditto the originating country's aircraft will have features that are not exported for the same reasons.
whoooooooooooooooooooosh! did i just see something pass overhead?
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/13.66.html#subj1
no, I don't think this is a type. Search for somone and u will see that somone is often requested to fix things in numberable fields. Somone is quite smart, so I would be satisfied outsmarting somone. 138,000 search results on google and I am only now hearing of somone. Unbelievable!
When all else fails, try.
I think the post meant to say "Impotence" - the inability to shoot when desired.
Best go to the MIT site then and pick up Matt Blaize's document about picking locks.
:-).
:-).
Just one word of warning: a Samsonite briefcase with 4 digit digital lock has actually MORE than 10000 different combinations, the true number of possible combinations of that lock is 11111, which is why a bunch of hackers on a hacker weekend spend the whole weekend trying to open it and didn't succeed (very evil grin) - I hadn't corrected their assumption that it had 10000 combinations
Not that you need that long - it has a far more basic vulnerability in the electronics by which you can open it in under 10 seconds
Insert
Car analogies break down.
I'd say you owe us at least a couple slabs of VBs!
I was at the Paris Air Show a few years ago. One company had on display a MIG cockpit. They had retrofitted it with modern avionics.
The problem was that the display model, that was at the show, was running Windows and had BSODed. I wonder how many they sold...
I thought we were doing it in alphabetical order, but obviously not.
When I was in high school so many years ago, I spent a couple of summer weeks in Europe on one of those tours that shows you everything you can see from a bus. On the flight up to JFK (the one in New York) for our departure to Brussels, one of my classmates commented on how much she was looking forward to visiting Austria. Now I have nothing against Austria, and it turned out to be the country where one of my most memorable experiences on the trip occurred, but at the time I could not imagine why a high school student from North Carolina would have any particular reason to look forward to being in Austria. Maybe she liked mountains. So I asked.
She was looking forward to the accent. I was impressed. To this day I don't think I would be able to distinguish an Austrian from a German by accent.
"You know. The way Olivia Newton-John talks."
Oh.
JADBP
(Floating around the net :^)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
... as Ozzie doesn't sound like he is in the middle of a two week druge binge, either. Two weeks isn't a binge for him, that is more of a "light appetizer before the main course".
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.