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US Sentinel Drone Fooled Into Landing With GPS Spoofing
McGruber writes "Following up on the earlier Slashdot story, the Christian Science Monitor now reports that GPS spoofing was used to get the RQ-170 Sentinel Drone to land in Iran. According to an Iranian engineer quoted in the article, 'By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.' Apparently, once it loses its brain, the bird relies on GPS signals to get home. By spoofing GPS, Iranian engineers were able to get the drone to 'land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications.'"
You mean the CIA has been actively trying to halt the nuclear weapons program of a nation who is opposed to the United States? Surely you jest!
putting aside allegiances for a moment and looking at this from a purely engineering standpoint: bad ASS!!
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So, the Iranians admit to spoofing GPS positions and this *isn't* used as an excuse to say 'the Iranians tricked it into crossing the border'? Color me impressed.
So, first of all, this is just really neat. It sounds like something that would happen in a movie. That's some movie-hacker shit right there.
That aside, the thing that really worries me here is that the military's GPS was able to be spoofed in the first place. One would think that the GPS the military relies on would be encrypted or something, y'know? How difficult is it to spoof military GPS?
Or crashed near some homes and self destructed while some kids were dragging it home.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
With apologies to Under Siege 2:
The US government is spying on Iran's nuclear ambitions. We (Americans and Iranians) know about the spying. And they know that we know. But we make-believe that we don't know, and they make-believe that they believe that we don't know, but know that we know.
Everybody knows.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
So, the Iranians admit to spoofing GPS positions and this *isn't* used as an excuse to say 'the Iranians tricked it into crossing the border'? Color me impressed.
When Coke originally changed the recipe and then had to do a LOT of backpedalling to restore the original flavour (and get the sales back), the CEO made a wonderful comment on the whole thing. People were accusing Coca Cola of doing this on purpose to drive sales. Keough answered this speculation by saying "We're not that dumb, and we're not that smart".
I think this can very much also apply to this situation. The US government wasn't dumb enough to openly admit to spying and the like, but they weren't smart enough to concoct your excuse before the cat was out of the bag.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
FTA:
"We all feel drunk [with happiness] now," says the Iranian engineer. "Have you ever had a new laptop? Imagine that excitement multiplied many-fold."
I'm surprised that it didn't have some sort of dead-reckoning or inertial system as a backup in such cases. If the dead-reckoning says "whoa, it is physically impossible for you to be anywhere NEAR where you think you are so ignore the GPS, go on inertial" ...
You forget that these things are designed by bloated defense contractors. These are the same people that were caught transmitting unencrypted video signals from spy drones that enemies were recording OTA.
It wouldn't shock me in the slightest if it really was that easy to hijack the drone. It also wouldn't shock me that they didn't build-in any destruct safe-guard that erases all software, blow all fuses, and use the battery to burn the internals. In fact wrapping an Li-ion polymer pack around the control board then purposely putting the battery into overload to make it catch fire seems a reasonable way to handle it. Have it listen for a short encrypted destruct packet over shortwave that is encrypted with a one-time pad so they can blast the destruct signal at high power and have it bounce all over the world. I'm quite sure you could make it incredibly difficult to block that simple short destruct signal.
Of course you must remember that it would be highly beneficial for Iran to claim they brought it down on purpose. Why you would tell your enemy how you did it publicly is beyond me.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Halting would be one thing, but the reality is that the CIA started off trying to prevent Iran restarting a nuclear weapons program that had already been halted, then it moved to trying to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons in a couple of decades that it would not likely be able to ever deliver. It is now trying to stop Iran having deliverable nuclear weapons in two years.
The assassinations, sabotage of equipment and virus infestations have led to a massive increase in Iran's investment and a net acceleration of the program.
As halting goes, this is a total, unmitigated disaster beyond all possible imagining. Doing absolutely nothing at the start would have been sounder policy, based on data available. Doing bugger all once the program had started would still have given us ten years WE DON'T HAVE ANYMORE.
Whatever lunatic thought up the program needs their head examined because this is the kind of absolute failure of intelligence (and wits) plus absolute failure of strategy that has led to the US spending $1tn on achieving bugger all in the Middle East this past decade. $1tn we taxpayers have to fork up. $1tn we don't have, won't have and will never have because we're going to now be pulled into another $1tn disaster. WE DON'T HAVE THE MONEY ANYMORE, EITHER!
Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, and by that standard half of CIA HQ should be locked up in a padded cell. This is inexcusable stupidity beyond all comprehension.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A compass and some accelerometers(or even a view of the sun and an RTC) are a lousy substitute for the accuracy of GPS; but they do provide a sanity check that could keep you going in approximately the right direction, at least enough to hard-land somewhere nominally friendly, if GPS cannot be trusted...
It's almost certain that this drone DOES have an inertial navigation system - the problem is, how do you know when to use it? The way they usually work is that the navigation system computes two solutions: a hybrid GPS/INS solution to use most of the time, and a backup inertial-only solution. The inertial-only solution doesn't get used by the flight computers unless GPS is out entirely or there's some other very obvious problem. If you spoofed a GPS signal with real coordinates and slowly guided it away, how could the nav system see there's something wrong?
Programmer: an ingenious device that converts caffeine into code.
I'm surprised that it didn't have some sort of dead-reckoning or inertial system as a backup in such cases. If the dead-reckoning says "whoa, it is physically impossible for you to be anywhere NEAR where you think you are so ignore the GPS, go on inertial" ...
This reminds me of a cruise ship running aground because a GPS antenna came unhooked. The crew was supposed to use LORAN to verify the GPS every hour, but they didn't.
In some ways, the US may have learned just as much from this as the Iranians. Losing one unmanned aircraft to learn of a serious exploit that has implications far beyond drones might not be such a bad result.
You mean the CIA has been actively trying to halt the nuclear weapons program of a nation who is opposed to the United States?
Maybe a better, simpler solution is to build good relations with those who oppose you? This current strategy doesn't seem to be working very well and looks like it will only end with lots of people getting killed.
The United States spends more on military toys and the US military in general than *all* of the other nations in the world *combined* (which includes Russia and China). Yet, as was shown in Viet Nam, as was shown in Iraq, and is being shown in Afghanistan, the US military, with all its high tech toys, can be defeated by simple, low-tech (and cheap) devices made up of 25 bucks of Radio Shack parts. The US military has it's "eye on the ball", yet it continues to over estimate its power and the effectiveness of its toys. Trillions of US dollars down the drain every year for military toys and invasions of other countries which pose absolutely no threat to the US, and for what? A false sense of security at best.
One small correction -- at least one of the assassinated scientists turned out to be a theoretical quantum mechanics lecturer with no skills or knowledge applicable to the type of nuclear science relating to weapons technology. So basically they're not killing nuke scientists, they're killing scientists in the hopes of killing nuke scientists.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You mean the CIA has been actively trying to halt the nuclear weapons program of a nation who is opposed to the United States?
Maybe a better, simpler solution is to build good relations with those who oppose you? This current strategy doesn't seem to be working very well and looks like it will only end with lots of people getting killed.
Building good relations with Iran probably wouldn't go over very well, given the results in the past when the US has "built good relations with Iran". Avoiding screwing things up like the US has historically done would be a good first step, however. Working to remove the label of "international power-hungry bully" from the non-domestic US branches of government would also help. Until this happens, Iran's not going to trust the US further than it can throw a sandal.
Except for the People. Let's make sure the People know, and things will unravel.
Frankly, if you are an American citizen, and you seriously thought that your government is not spying on Iran (including covert missions on their territory) up until that whole drone story, you are naive to the extreme, and should probably abstain from voting or otherwise participating in politics.
Maybe a better, simpler solution is to build good relations with those who oppose you?
You neatly summarize Polish foreign policy in the 1930s.
Looking for a job in Portland, Oregon?
So, they spoofed GPS, jammed the drone's communications, then convinced it to land with the spoofed GPS coordinates. That's awesome.
Then, uhhh, why exactly did you guys have the kids from the Tehran High school football team and pep squad make up banners to hide the undercarriage?
Don't get me wrong. Both sides have plenty invested in having their own version of the story be the authoritative version, and the odds of the general public finding out the truth any time this decade are infinitesimal at best. But what we've been shown doesn't currently support the "we made it land on its own because we're fucking badass and the Americans suck" theory. It supports the "we don't want you to see what the underbelly looks like, also, we're lousy artists" theory. The iranians might have brought it down, and it might have crashed on its own while inside Iranian borders. "Proof" is in short supply at the moment.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
They seem to have perfectly fine relations with Saudi Arabia?
Also, you do know that most of his "outlandish quotes" are usually either purposefully mistranslated, or ripped massively out of context?
Because you know, US and EU are in dire threat of being conquered by rising economic and military might of Iran. Awesome comparison.
He may be nutty, but how many aggressive actions has Iran actually performed in the last hundred years?
Much is made of Ahmadinejad and his supposed nuttiness and his Holocaust denial, but what has he actually done. Iran actually has a large Jewish population minority the largest of any Muslim country. Much is made of his supposed threat to Israel, but Iran hasn't invaded any country in the last century and more, whereas Israel has invaded all of its neighbors on several occasions and even annexed land in just the last 50 years, and the US has invaded two of Iran's neighbors. Iran is building nuclear reactors where Israel and the US already has them. Why can Pakistan, which actively supported the Taliban, and terrorists in India, and harbored bin Laden, allowed to legitimately own nukes (and is even a US ally) while Iran can't even have reactors?
As for supporting terrorism? All but one of the 9/11 hijackers were from either Saudi Arabia or Egypt, the US's supposed allies. There hasn't been a single instance of an Iranian suicide bomber anywhere. Iran however, was invaded jointly by the UK and Soviet Union in World War 2 to provide a seaport for shipping supplies to Russia. The US deposed its former democratically elected President in the 1950s. When the despotic Shah was deposed, and Iraq invaded Iran, the US actively supposed Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction (poison gas) were used against the Iranians, while the US at best turned a blind eye, and at worse, aided and abetted Iraq. During said war, the US shot down an Iranian civilian airliner and to this day refuses to apologize for the incident. And now, Iran is suffering from sabotage of its facilities and assassinations of some of its smartest scientists.
Or did you have the silly impression that bad relations were solely because of the current Iranian president, or that all the bad blood came solely from the Iranian side?
Iran, too has been invaded before. Iraq invaded Iran within living memory and attempted to annex and wipe out Iran (Hussein cited the original Muslim invaders of Persia as rallying cries for his invasion). In doing so, Iraqi troops performed acts of brutality, and WMDs (supported by the US) against both military and civilian targets, as well as engaging in terror bombing.
Why isn't it acceptable for Iran to say "Never again" and defend itself against neighbors that would see Iran destroyed? (Also keeping in mind that iran hasn't engaged in any aggressive actions or invasions against her neighbors since the 18th century or so, while Israel has bombed and invaded all of its neighbors at some pont, and its most recent war happened in only 2006.
"(Also keeping in mind that iran hasn't engaged in any aggressive actions or invasions against her neighbors since the 18th century or so, while Israel has bombed and invaded all of its neighbors at some pont, and its most recent war happened in only 2006."
You were doing pretty well until this point.
Iran has been carrying out proxy wars funding, training, and arming groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and parts of the Iraqi and Afghan insurgency for years now.
The whole reason Lebanon has been so close to being a thriving secular democracy but then repeatedly fallen into chaos and civil war is because Iran and Syria love to have a puppet army on Israel's doorstep and recognise they need to destabilise the legitimate military and government of that nation to achieve their goals, because Lebanon's secular, legitimate government and military has never been interested in carrying out Iran's war for it.
Don't try and pretend they're innocent, they're a major destabilising force in the middle east, because whilst they don't directly invade foreign nations, they play the game of proxy war as well as the CIA ever has. You've got to be pretty naive to think otherwise.
Whilst I completely disagree with Israel's actions relating to the Palestinians, it betrays your real agenda when you complain of Israel invading it's neighbours. Let's not forget that more often than not this is because it's neighbours have tried to invade it, but unfortunately for them Israel pushed back and won. Here's a thought experiment for you - if Egypt, Syria, et. al. had succesfully invaded Israel, would you still be sat here calling it the bad guy? I'm not convinced invading a foreign nation to stop it invading you is necessarily a bad thing. Certainly things are much more stable between the likes of Egypt, Jordan, Israel etc. than they were back then.
Look, hate Israel for what they've done to the Palestinians all you want - I'd agree with you there, but to then go to the extreme of pretending Iran is some magical, innocent, ultra-friendly nation, and it's Israel's fault entirely? That's just dumb, ignorant, and naive.