Iraqi insurgents using $26 software to monitor Predator video feeds

watisdis

watisdis

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We can't say we've ever heard of a $26 Russian program called SkyGrabber before, but it's about to get famous real fast -- according to the Wall Street Journal, Iraqi insurgents have been regularly using the satellite-snooping software to monitor live Predator video feeds. Apparently the Predator transmits video over an unencrypted link, so there's no major hacking or security breach going on here, but it's obviously a huge issue -- and we'd say the bigger problem is that Pentagon officials have known about this flaw since the 1990s, but they didn't think insurgents would figure out how to exploit it. Way to underestimate, guys. The WSJ says the military is working to encrypt all Predator feeds from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but it's slow going because the Predator network is more than a decade old and based on proprietary tech -- too bad it's not proprietary enough to keep prying eyes out of it.
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Link

Wow, major fail on the DoD. I would never in a million years would've thought these feeds were unencrypted. Hell even the cable channels I don't subscribe to are encrypted in one way or another.
 
But again, before digital cable, there were low-cost solutions around those.
 
watisdis said:
Wow, major fail on the DoD. I would never in a million years would've thought these feeds were unencrypted. Hell even the cable channels I don't subscribe to are encrypted in one way or another.
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If I weren't a competent programmer, I would never in a million years think that they could also view the live feeds, either.

You just know the thought process behind that was:

"Hey, should we encrypt this?"
"You really think some <favorite slur> is going to be able to get to this in the first place?"
 
Jeez, encrypting a feed isn't exactly rocket science, even in the 90's.
You would think that would be about the first question / requirement you would ask about when evaluating military tech. :?
 
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Ehh...our enemies were not nearly as advanced as they are now. We had a lot of tech in the 90's...them having tech is a fairly recent turn of events, is it not?
 
NecroJoe said:
Ehh...our enemies were not nearly as advanced as they are now. We had a lot of tech in the 90's...them having tech is a fairly recent turn of events, is it not?
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I don't think Iraq was exactly in the stone age, but why assume that your enemy is not going to be tech savvy when developing something like this.
What if we needed to use this against a different enemy that had vast technical resources?
Still a pretty silly decision, since it would not have been that difficult or costly to implement.
 
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If we saw that in "Transformers 3" or something, we surely would be pissed off about "Hollywood inaccuracies". :lol:
 
Redliner said:
If we saw that in "Transformers 3" or something, we surely would be pissed off about "Hollywood inaccuracies". :lol:
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When insurgents manage to get ahold of cell phones that never drop calls, anywhere...then America will truly have lost. :cry:
 
Ohhh the unmanned drone.

I thought they meant

predator.jpg


Edit: Srs: That's a major fail on the DoD. I mean you'd be hard-pressed to find people without WAPs on their routers (though I know a bunch who still dont protect it). It's just common sense
 
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Predator porn. Imagine it.
 
:lol: That's great.
 
This is hilarious; we spend billions developing all this equipment and it gets broken in to by something that costs $26.
 
So 2 coffees at Starbucks or a Predator feed monitoring software? Great stuff.
 
iirc the crap that handled all the satellite transmissions and such was proprietary software so not really stuff the military spent billions on.
Also, according to this the problem has been since "handled"
 
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Until one crashes and they find it first and get the electronics. Each one should have individual codes for the encryption.
 
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