The Glade 4.0

It's interesting how we assume that all the other areas of government are just incompetent, yet assume that the military must be doing something sneaky and inventive.

It would appear that the problem is larger than initially reported. Apparently this ROVER units are in many manned aircraft as well.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12 ... warplanes/

If you mean lead pipe cryptanalysis, sure. From a technical standpoint, properly constructed mechanisms are difficult in the extreme to crack. The true test of any mechanism is if an outside party cannot defeat it, even with full working knowledge of it. There is an inflection point where it becomes significantly easier to utilize social engineering attacks. At that point, it is no longer the encryption mechanism that is the weak spot. Simply because avenues of bypass exist is no reason to discourage use of a security mechanism. Someone could simply kick in your front door, too, does that stop you from locking it?

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I figure the lack of encryption on the video could have been a deliberate decisions based up on the need of the "pilots" have highly accurate information regarding the surroundings to properly operate the vehicle remotely, and the time delay between what the camera sees and what is displayed needs to be minimized as much as possible, a delay that heavy encryption might extend to a point that time sensitive decisions can no longer be made.

The video feed was probably seen as important, but not critical in the sense it compromised the control of the vehicle.

Now, to the general public, it sounds like a stupid decision, but ...

Basically yes, but there's more to it...

Wouldn't you want to make it seem easier than it actually is, both in order to lure people into trying it, and to cover up what the vulnerabilities really were?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't believe the video feed that's being talked about here is the one used to fly the aircraft. That one wouldn't be terribly useful because it would jsut show what the pilot needs to do the flying, not what's actually being reconed. The camera system that looks at the target isn't the same one as used for flying.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't think it is either, since that camera would be critical to the operation of the vehicle. But the targeting cameras I would imagine still need to have a degree "relevance" when it comes to what is actually happening and what the people watching the targeting camera sees. I also got the impression from some of the discussions and reading that the recon/targetting information is what gets sent abroad (as in not just to the pilot/control area). Splitting that feed would make a bit more sense if that is accurate.

They would probably be two completely different feeds since I can think of no useful purpose in integrating them. You are definitely correct that the targeting camera would be the feed people would be interested in since it would let the enemy know what we know.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yup, that's what the "easily available tech (whether that was the case or not)" part was about. In any event, we're on the same page.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

We're close. Come on, for bunch of people that don't trust the government I can't believe no one is picking up on this!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

They're wartime field testing and refining for a domestic surveillance unit?

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I personally think the government knows the only way this ******* CiC will get support is if there is an attack on American soil again, and is trying to goad them into such an attack.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I think the CiC and his staff underestimated the technical abilities of the insurgents, and didn't make securing those transmissions a priority.

No, that's really got nothing to do with it getting hacked.

Basically what I'm getting at here is, if it was me I'd put out that there was no security whether there was or not. That way, you don't give away that the security you could put in place has been compromised and until you patch it... there ain't none.

It also tempts people to come out of the woodwork and give this a shot by making it seem easier than it is.

Of course, that's just how I'd handle it and try and get some mileage out of an overall negative situation. I'm not saying that's what's necessarily going on; just how I'd play it. It's also possible that there actually isn't any security; in that case I'd come right out and say so to keep people like me guessing, to lure people out of the woodwork anyhow, and because you really lose nothing; if there was no security in the first place there's no holes to patch in whatever you do implement.

In other words, when sometihng like this is publicly admitted.. it's probably true that it happened, but the how may or may not be.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Misinformation is one tactic for information control. Its not a bad one, and its usually free.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Now you're getting the picture. According to Army doctrine, every operation should include some sort of deception plan. Let the enemy see what you want him to see. AFAIK the other services are no different since we always fight jointly anyhow.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

While I think that's true, I think most would say they trust the government enough not to do anything overtly stupid. Though, sometimes the best place to hide something is right out in the open.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Yeah. Go over and blow smoke there to cover up X, and go over there and blow smoke to make them think we are covering up Y.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

What I was really getting at ws taking the assertion that "oh yeah, this link was completely unprotecte" at face value.

Maybe it was unprotected. Things like that happen, like the cruise missile incident 2 years ago. Then again, maybe it wasn't. Either way, if my **** got hacked I'd be thinking not just "how can I stop this from happening in the future?" but "how can I turn this into an advantage?". In fact, they're sort of the same thing; one way to stop it happening in the future is to catch the people inclined to do it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I have to say, I hope it's that our military are that sneaky.

It seems all to plausible to me, though, that in the drive for 'cheaper, faster, better' a defense contractor built drone parts out of commodity video transfer hardware used by journo's, et al, and didnt think to encrypt it.

I've just seen too much 'big corp' idiocy like that... not that I know anything at all about military procurement, but the Ministry of Defense over here bought 8 special ops chinooks without the software, and now can't use them. And they're like 259 million worth of kit.

It's entirely possible that something like that happened, but even if it did, you'd still play it for whatever benefit you could get out of it.

"The military" isn't "sneaky" or "not that sneaky" either. Some people are sneakier than others. The sort of people who handle things like intelligence, public affairs, and hi-tech equipment ought to be intelligent and clever, and generally will be more so than, say, cooks or artillery crewmen. Still, even within a field each person will have different talents. Some of those will be talents at creating oppotunities to lure the enemy into a trap.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

One of my friends once told me that I would be a lousy fraud investigator, the reason - I just can't think like a crook.

We both agreed that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it ruled out some career fields.

I figure sneaky military ops guy was out as well.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones