Slashdot Mirror
Air Force Comments On Drone Malware
wiredmikey writes "Air Force officials have revealed more details about a malware infection that impacted systems used to manage a fleet of drones at the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada as reported last week. The 24th Air Force first detected the malware – which they characterized as a 'credential stealer' as opposed to a keylogger as originally reported — and notified Creech Air Force Base officials Sept. 15 that malware was found on portable hard drives approved for transferring information between systems. The infected computers were part of the ground control system that supports remotely-piloted aircraft (RPA) operations. The malware is not designed to transmit data or video or corrupt any files, programs or data, according to the Air Force. The ground system is separate from the flight control system used by RPA pilots to fly the aircrafts."
I wonder if he was told he won the Slobobvian Lottery before he was hit.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A "feet of drones" is the proper collective noun only when they're on the ground. In the air they're known as a "bungle".
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The drones must be running Android
Yeah, this makes much more sense. Didn't stop everyone from reporting that the drone fleet was infected with viruses when this first broke. I could be wrong but I'm fairly sure the Predator isn't running Windows 98 (or god help us all). I think those of us with some sense were wondering when the real story was going to break.
What kind of 'credential stealer' doesn't transmit data? Is it even stolen if not transmitted? Is this a DRM definition of 'stealing' that means copying?
Not that the Air Force isn't duty-bound to lie about this to reduce the escaping media Signal to safe Noise. I'm just wondering if there's a way their bedtime tale could make sense.
Did anyone else read that headline as "Airforce Drone Comments on Malware"?
malware was found on portable hard drives approved for transferring information between systems.
Does that suggest that someone forgot to turn off auto-run? Or was it really only on the hard drive, and never actually infected the controlling computers?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
{Insert oblig. Borg reference, mutated for originality}
----
All Your Bots Are Belong To Bob - Anon.
If a drone running Windows 98 is destroyed, is it okay to re-use the license key on a new one?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
My favorite quote from the article: “We continue to strengthen our cyber defenses, using the latest anti-virus software and other methods to protect Air Force resources and assure our ability to execute Air Force missions,” Cook said in a statement. “Continued education and training of all users will also help reduce the threat of malware to Department of Defense systems.” Why do I get the feeling that Norton/McAffee are offering their 'latest anti-virus software" to "strengthen our cyber defenses"...which will inevitably lead to a 2-4 year staged upgrade of all systems to bring them back up to their 'speeds' before they were "strengthened"..while software from ESET, VIPRE & AVAST are only found on the laptops of off duty personnel that have a clue. Given that DARPA sort of kickstarted this whole thing we're using these days you might think there'd be some military-grade software in use but I've yet to see any hint of that in any of the 'cybersecurity' discussions that find their way into our shared discussions on the 'tubes'.
Something very bad just happened. I just know it. Do you smell smoke?
Sounds an awful lot like media damage control to me. Downplaying the scale of the failure and misinforming the public once the full scale has became known and the utter mind-boggling disaster it was has became apparent. So far it was "We've got an embarassing problems", and now it became "If the press learns of the full scale, heads will fall like rain."
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Quite sophisticated. Found "on hard drives approved for transferring information between systems". I'm sure it's harmless though. No doubt the pilots surfing Facebook use a different code to log into the kill drones flying above our troops...right?
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
The implication is apparently that since it was only the ground control system, not the flight control system, there was no danger of the aircraft control being compromised. This is false. The ground control system is in fact in complete control of the aircraft, if it so chooses. The bottom line is, somebody should be put in the brig for allow Windows anywhere near a UAV.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
[url=http://www.buyuggshoponline.com/]ugg boots sale uk[/url]
[url=http://www.sheepskinugg-outlet.com/]ugg boots uk[/url]
[url=http://www.genuineuggbootshop.com/]ugg boots outlet[/url]
[url=http://www.favorite-ugg.com/]ugg outlet[/url]
[url=http://www.uggsshop-cheap.com/]uggs outlet[/url]
[url=http://www.cheap-uggmall.com/]Uggs outlet[/url]
[url=http://www.cheap-uggbootstore.com/]ugg boots sale uk[/url]
[url=http://www.genuineugg-us.com/]genuine ugg boots[/url]
[url=http://www.uggaustralia-com.com/]ugg boots outlet[/url]
If the computers are really not connected to the Internet as I had read from the earlier articles, the virus can't send any information it captures nor can it receive commands. At most it could format their hard drive.
http://www.buyuggshoponline.com">ugg boots sale uk
http://www.sheepskinugg-outlet.com">ugg boots uk
http://www.genuineuggbootshop.com">ugg boots outlet
http://www.favorite-ugg.com">ugg outlet
http://www.uggsshop-cheap.com">uggs outlet
http://www.cheap-uggmall.com">Uggs outlet
http://www.cheap-uggbootstore.com">ugg boots sale uk
http://www.genuineugg-us.com">genuine ugg boots
http://www.uggaustralia-com.com">ugg boots outlet
Why don't they allow only signed software that is on a whitelist to run on their computers?
Sure, whitelists are highly undesirable for ordinary consumers (to say the least..), but for the military or other domains with high security demands they seem to make sense to me. Shouldn't their software be audited and signed first anyway? Shouldn't they run a custom BIOS and an operating system that can check signatures before running code? Are there technical reasons against this?
Just wondering.
I bet they run Windows XP, and the frikken autorun.inf file was hacked.
This is a farce. Neither windows, nor linux or OS/X or commodity PC hardware should be let within 100 miles of these systems. Wtf are the military playing at? Is their trillion dollar budget not enough to afford some proper kit and in house software FFS?
"Remain calm, all is well."
Defense:Enterprise::Enterprise:User
The military has been told by GAO and OMB and other bean counters to use COTS --- it's also more expensive to get things developed on proprietary systems and that runs into single source issues.
Arguably everyone should use NSA's security-enhanced Linux:
http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/
Or similarly secured systems.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
"It also underlines a fact I have known for years. Senior staff, officials, managers the political classes and military staff don't understand the technology at all."
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html ... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It's a trillion dollars WITH off-the-shelf software, and off-the-shelf software at least has some proving time in a hostile environment (i.e. the real world.) If the military or contractors had to write that stuff themselves, the cost would be 1000x higher. And it's not like it would be just more expensive up front... A custom OS means all custom drivers, for everything - video cards, monitors, I/O ports, keyboard... And every time you need to change hardware suppliers you get to add another few $M for rewriting and retesting them. They would also have a very tiny pool of developers to draw on for that kind of work, making it extremely expensive to staff projects. And there'd be little reason to suspect it would be any more secure. It certainly couldn't have the same level of billions of hours of field use. Like it or not, they have to play the same cost vs. risk analysis game that any corporation plays. Their tolerance for cost might be higher than some, but it's not infinite. They have to leverage off-the-shelf based solutions. However I would suggest that solutions must be based upon the most secure choices - like SELinux (now mostly incorporated into the mainstream kernel) with Mandatory Access Controls enabled, and restrictive whitelists of what can be executed, from where, and by whom. The kind of environment that would be unusable for a regular PC... Because it's not meant to be a regular PC!!!!!
BINGO! Policies that carry significant political political weight, especially when they become fashionable routes to swift approval, are especially prone to misunderstanding, misapplication, and imbalance between indented and unintended consequences. COTS, when misused as a panacea to achieve affordability, tends to not only be less affordable in the long run, but often leads to less effective solutions. The problem is that panaceas rarely are. Policies mindlessly pursued lead to poor results decoupled from original kernel of intent. There are certainly valid places for COTS, and valid reasons for nots.
All that the keylogger captured was a bunch of sequences of "IDDQD" and "IDKFA" typed over and over again.
Make the datalogger very infectious but otherwise look harmless.
The datalogger dumps the information back into someplace like say the portable hard drive that brought it into the secured area to begin with. It sets up shop and makes a gazillion copies of the data it was designed to ferret out but it does nothing but log the data.
Then the portable hard drive gets walked out of the building and used on other hosts, at least one of which is infected with a transmission vector which picks up the payload and forwards it to somewhere else.
The transmission vector doesn't have to be ubiquitous or virulent because that would be very easy to catch. All it needs to be is patient and wait for someone to deliver a suitable payload from any datalogger created to interface with it. The datalogger(s) will always look harmless because they can't even transmit the information on their own and the transmitter will look harmless since it doesn't replicate aggressively or quickly and doesn't ever appear to do anything at all until it encounters an appropriate payload.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer
People often misunderstand that moncler company only sale moncler jackets, because moncler jackets is the most famous brand in the world, people ignore their coats, which first open the domestic market.
Unlike other brands that first famous of its jackets, moncler first product moncler coats for people. As the first model of moncler jackets, moncler coats stress more about warmth and comfort instead of style.
moncler coats use the fluffy coating on the inner side which helps in keeping the body temperature normal. On the outer side, deep and cozy pockets have been stitched for putting in the hands. The stitching of these coats is done strongly so as to avoid any kind of breaking in case of wearing them roughly. Consider the situation in Europea that winter always with heavy snow and wind, their coats are not ordinary coats. The purpose of designing moncler coats is that keep people away from severe cold. No matter how cold it is outside, people can also wear the coats in that place where heavy snow falls often.
Warmth as well as comfort, moncler coatshelp people enjoy the happy life while snow outside. With moncler coats, people can do extreme activity and try their best to hiking, skiing and running. But the heavy weight then becomes the problem. After long-term practice, people often feel tired. Varied by people who favour moncler coats, they demands a new product that lightweight. This promote the process of manufacture moncler jackets.
Continues the way of moncler coats. Moncler jackets also ensure people warmth and comfort, with 3 down gram design, people only feel sleeping in bad instead of walking in snow. Using environmentally friend materials, this jacket ensure people health as well as warmth. Not need to worry about snow, its waterproof design adapt to all conditions. No matter you are hiking, skiing and running, lightweight design moncler jackets fit for long term practice. For example, moncler jackets for women use high technology lightweight. Feeling gentle and keeping warm,a lightest down garment is as light as 90 gram,but the longest one isn't heavier than 230 gram.The products are limited to sell as 2400 pieces around the world.
As soon as its jackets outlet, people all consider the style of moncler jackets. There are so many jackets in the world that all of them look the same. In order to make their jacket different, designer of moncler jackets pay more attention to style and colors. After using highlight colors to attractive people, it is difficult to find orange and yellow moncler jackets online.
Since moncler jackets become more and more popular, moncler jackets sale to the International market. Since it stand out of the competitors, people will never regret purchase money on such stylish ones. Moncler is famour for its down jacket and is a unified fashion brand, personality rather than obvious.Simple moncler jacken and moncler coats brings infinite taste and connotation.Moncler product in 1954 was selected as the Italian explorer of ancient Mongolian Empire site equipment.
In 1955 they supply the French expedition to Makale. Moncler is your better choice to keep cold from you,besides,it can also bring you fashion and beauty. Here we offer moncler clothing,Moncler Jackets,Moncler Coats,Moncler Down,Moncler vest,Moncler Kids, Moncler Boots and Bags.All of which are made from original material,which is recognized by all the world and is safe but reliable. Now sports apparel category for the fashion circle finally achieved the greatest impact.
You can find more color and style in Moncler store now.Adrienne Ma,Joyce Ma`s daughter,bring Moncler to HongKong,Moncler sell out in few weeks.
It is happy to wear Moncler down jacket in winter,cold weather,which is the must thing in winter,bring you not on
But if the offending piece of malware was on an NTFS file system, and accessed the ADS, hundreds of megabytes worth of lifted data could be stored, and nobody would be the wiser unless they checked to see what kind of data was hidden if resource forking was implemented. Pray this isn't the case, because if it is, Victoria won't have too many secrets left.