Slashdot Mirror
Iranian TV Shows Downed US Drone
First time accepted submitter loic_2003 writes "Iranian TV has broadcast footage of an advanced U.S. drone aircraft that Tehran says it brought down using electronic methods to override its controls. The BBC's James Reynolds watched the footage and said the fact that the drone appeared undamaged provided some evidence to support Tehran's version of events. The film was captioned 'RQ170 — advanced U.S. spy plane' and carried on the Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1 channel."
There is nothing more dangerous to a drone than a TV show.
They have anti-aircraft TV shows? We're screwed.
...then I took an arrow to the knee
...someone stole your sweetroll.
They probably forgot to put a password on PHPMyAdmin.
Despite extensive covering on the underside, to me it looks TOO fresh and undamaged. It doesn't look used at all
I think this is a mold reproduction of whatever they did get, faired out the damaged areas, swapped over a few parts and the paint is is still wet. There is nothing underneath it, its just a surface shell that looks right.
Just like the CIA changed its story, you mean? "Drone, what drone?" to "It's possible we've lost one in Afghanistan, but no one took it down" to "Yeah, it's probably ours. But it didn't enter their airspace" to "Well, it might have strayed accidentally into their airspace." At some point in the future, when all is said and declassified, I'm sure we'll learn it was on a spy mission in the middle of Iran.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If by "offend," you mean "possibly start a fucking war by sending U.S. troops into Iran, all for the sake of a lousy drone" then yes.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Tehran says it brought down using electronic methods to override its controls" Hey now. Espionage and sabotage are one thing, but that might be a DMCA violation!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
My recollection is that it was only the video feed returned from the drone that was unencrypted. The control signals sent to the aircraft were still encrypted. Even signal jamming is apparently a difficult way to disable the drone because it has a degree of autonomy.
If Iran's claims are true (that it gained control of the plane) then that is either quite an achievement on their part, or quite a failure on the part of the US engineers.
But right now I'm claiming that it glided into the sandy wasteland after it had a failure and they found it.
For a recon platform, that's a pretty crappy fail safe mode.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Lets see here. We're waging robo war in Pakistan, Afganistan, Iraq Yemen - virtually surrounded their whole country - some 100K troops near their borders. ...and if I understand you, you're complaining that the Iranians used some props you find offensive.
We're beating the drums of "Those Iranians are the worst since Hitler..."
We're probably assassinating their scientists.
We've invaded multiple countries without provocation for a long time, and waged countless covert wars and actions against those we don't like.
We supported a proxy war [using our best friend Saddam Hussain - (where have I heard that name before?)] using weapons of mass destruction against the Iranians, using US intelligence.
And less than sixty years ago we helped overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran and put in place the Shah. [Who was evil in ways that Hitler *would* understand.]
You sir, have a most misplaced sense of decency [or a most woefully inadequate knowledge of the history of the dealings of your country].
Of all the offenses betwixt the USA and Iran, I'd posit that the balance isn't even close to parity. The Iranians have a lot of IOU's due against the US. [Like enough to use one every day for a century.]
Clearly the solution is to have the planes fly autonomously, so if the signal from the remote control is broken, the onboard AI can move and deploy weapons at its own discretion.
There's a lot more to jamming than that. Unless your transmitter is absurdly more powerful than the one you're trying to jam out, spread spectrum transmissions can be extremely difficult to jam. The receiver is looking for (simplified here) modulation in a signal pattern. If you know the exact pattern you are looking for, you can very effectively filter out the noise. Then you just demodulate the signal to get your information out clean.
So when brute force isn't going to cut it, you have to really know what you're trying to jam, and more than likely you are going to have to be able to adapt, because critical control systems like this will have multiple fail-over procedures in place to automatically hop to a different band, modulation, whatever they care to mix up to render your jamming ineffective.
Providing a very simple example of why brute force doesn't work: get a whistle, and some really loud speakers and stereo. Have a friend stand by the speaker, occasionally blowing the whistle (maybe in a coded pattern that provides you with information), while the stereo cranks out the sound at ear-splitting levels. Standing 300 feet away, can you hear when the whistle blows? No you can't, the music is jamming you. Now get out a little handheld mic with headphones, and $15 in radio shack hardware for making a notch filter, tuned to the frequency of the whistle. Listen to that. You may hear a very faint trace of the music, but the whistle will be loud and clear every time its blown. Jamming is overcome. Doesn't really matter if you crank up the volume on the music either. Now what if the music happens to hit the note of the whistle and plays a solid or repeating tone at that frequency? So you start hearing that and can't tell when its the whistle or the music. Now your friend can see you waving your arms around indicating you can't hear him, so he puts that whistle in his pocket and takes out a different whistle. You flip a switch on your gear to switch the notch frequency for the next whistle. Now you're back in business. That's how jamming works, brute force often is ineffective.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
it was cited as response to an American act of aggression.
Illegally invading another country's sovereign airspace is an act of aggression.
Now we hear that they overrode communications and forced the drone to land.
Any stray military aircraft would also be offered a choice of being forced to land, or be shot down, under the same circumstances.
It's also possible that the drone was patrolling the border from inside Iraq or Afghanistan
The US lately seems to have no problems with crossing borders in Pakistan and Yemen and even killing people there in complete violation of international law. Why would flying over Iran be a problem? You have played the "poor innocent America we mean no harm we come in peace" card far too often. Sorry.
There's an air of deliberation here that doesn't square.
Oh it squares alright. Just like the ICBM launched off the California coast earlier this year oh no sorry it was a "jet". Just like the Chinese sub popping up next to the USS Kitty Hawk and saying hi. Just like the satellite that got blown out of the sky. It says "look what we can do - please invest more trillions in easily circumventable drone technology".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Evidently you think American engineers are idiots. The frequency hopping patterns for drone communications are produced by a cryptographically-secure random number generator with a pre-negotiated seed. Snoop it all you like; this isn't your neighbor with unsecured wifi, it's your neighbor with AES512 and a fifty-word passphrase surfing over a VPN tunnel.
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
— Otto von Bismarck
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Remember this story from back in October?
Exclusive: Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet
Ever since I read Iran claimed they didn't shoot it down, I've been wondering if or how much that virus and this "cyber warfare" attack might be connected...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
No. This is exactly your neighbor with unsecured wifi.
From the wall street journal, Dec 17, 2009.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html
"Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter."
What could possibly go wrong?
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Hate to break it to you buy the Predator and first run Reaper drones have completely unencrypted communications links, the com links on later drones might actually be up to snuff but there's no guarantee of that since they aren't public. The drones with unencrypted communications are still in the field since they're too valuable to pull for an overhaul.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.