Insurgents hack US drones

[Cliche]

Wall Street Journal article


There's a saying for most of the soldiers out there about equipment. It goes, "Remember, all your issued gear is made by the lowest bid contractor."

"There did appear to be a vulnerability," the defense official said. "There's been no harm done to troops or missions compromised as a result of it, but there's an issue that we can take care of and we're doing so."

Well at least there hasn't been circumvention of the Fire/Control commands yet.

[Canada 02]

Baltar gave them the codes to the defence mainframe

[worth]

How is this possible:

"These intercept techniques could be employed in other locations where the U.S. is using pilotless planes, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, they said."

The US isn't at war with any of those countries. I'm pretty sure none of them would allow the US to enter their air space. I know it happens frequently with Pakistan, there is probably even fighting by US troops in Pakistan. Guess the US is just circumventing the issue?

[I-Hate-Hulse]

As someone that has worked in IT security, this has me absolutely stunned:

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said.

No encryption? ARE YOU SERIOUS? Gee, who could possibly want access to this data? Probably the result of some fool making a choice for speed over security....

With guys this this running the system....I can see how SkyNet might happen.