Thread: We look the fool on this one....

Here's a good piece on the issue, which is both more widespread and less problematic than some have claimed:

Tapping into drones’ video feeds was just the start. The U.S. military’s primary system for bringing overhead surveillance down to soldiers and Marines on the ground is also vulnerable to electronic interception, multiple military sources tell Danger Room. That means militants have the ability to see through the eyes of all kinds of combat aircraft — from traditional fighters and bombers to unmanned spy planes. The problem is in the process of being addressed. But for now, an enormous security breach is even larger than previously thought.

The military initially developed the Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver, or ROVER, in 2002. The idea was let troops on the ground download footage from Predator drones and AC-130 gunships as it was being taken. Since then, nearly every airplane in the American fleet — from F-16 and F/A-18 fighters to A-10 attack planes to Harrier jump jets to B-1B bombers has been outfitted with equipment that lets them transmit to ROVERs. Thousands of ROVER terminals have been distributed to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But those early units were “fielded so fast that it was done with an unencrypted signal. It could be both intercepted (e.g. hacked into) and jammed,” e-mails an Air Force officer with knowledge of the program. In a presentation last month before a conference of the Army Aviation Association of America, a military official noted that the current ROVER terminal “receives only unencrypted L, C, S, Ku [satellite] bands.”

So the same security breach that allowed insurgent to use satellite dishes and $26 software to intercept drone feeds can be used the tap into the video transmissions of any plane.

The military is working to plug the hole — introducing new ROVER models that communicate without spilling its secrets. “Recognizing the potential for future exploitation the Air Force has been working aggressively to encrypt these ROVER downlink signals. It is my understanding that we have already developed the technical encryption solutions and are fielding them,” the Air Force officer notes.

But it won’t be easy. An unnamed Pentagon official tells reporters that “this is an old issue that’s been addressed.” Air Force officers contacted by Danger Room disagree, strongly.

“This is not a trivial solution,” one officer observes. “Almost every fighter/bomber/ISR [intelligence surveillance reconnaissance] platform we have in theater has a ROVER downlink. All of our Tactical Air Control Parties and most ground TOCs [tactical operations centers] have ROVER receivers. We need to essentially fix all of the capabilities before a full transition can occur and in the transition most capabilities need to be dual-capable (encrypted and unencrypted).


Not Just Drones: Militants Can Snoop on Most U.S. Warplanes (Updated) | Danger Room | Wired.com

It seems that there are varied levels of exposure here, and the original deployment was not encrypted to speed deployment to the field.

Since we don't really know the whole picture, it's hard to say whether or not deployment should have been delayed to design / build / deploy encrypted versions.

Matt

Originally Posted by daddio

if you've been told your price point, you pick your battles on how things add up. its congress.

NO, you've got it exactly backwards. It's the Air Force, or Navy, or whoever, that gives the price points to congress, after they get bids back from the manufacturer.

The price point differences come from things like "well, we can build it like this, so that it carries six missles, at aprice of $20 mil apiece; or we can build it like this, so it carries only four missles and a 20mm gun for $18 mil each. And we need", says the AF rep, "300 of each".

Congress may tell him that while he can have his 300 with the gun for 18 milion apiece, they can only have 200 with just missles at 20 million each.

But the avionics, computers, video systems, etc., etc., are already spec'd, priced out, and approved by the Air Force, before it gets to congress. Congress doesn't tell the AF that they can have 300 of each if they kill the computer encryption, or buy cheaper canopies. It just doesn't work like that at that point. Someone in the AF during the design stages had to make either a thoughtless decision by not asking about such capability, or a deliberate decision not to include encryption because they didn't think it would b a big deal.

Originally Posted by NiteGuy

NO, you've got it exactly backwards. It's the Air Force, or Navy, or whoever, that gives the price points to congress, after they get bids back from the manufacturer.

The price point differences come from things like "well, we can build it like this, so that it carries six missles, at aprice of $20 mil apiece; or we can build it like this, so it carries only four missles and a 20mm gun for $18 mil each. And we need", says the AF rep, "300 of each".

Congress may tell him that while he can have his 300 with the gun for 18 milion apiece, they can only have 200 with just missles at 20 million each.

But the avionics, computers, video systems, etc., etc., are already spec'd, priced out, and approved by the Air Force, before it gets to congress. Congress doesn't tell the AF that they can have 300 of each if they kill the computer encryption, or buy cheaper canopies. It just doesn't work like that at that point. Someone in the AF during the design stages had to make either a thoughtless decision by not asking about such capability, or a deliberate decision not to include encryption because they didn't think it would b a big deal.

Congress says dont bother asking for more than $X then Air Force decides what they can get for $X. Then congress says oh I meant $X -$Y abd they go back and see what they can live without. faster chipsets are casualties.

Originally Posted by daddio

Congress says dont bother asking for more than $X then Air Force decides what they can get for $X. Then congress says oh I meant $X -$Y abd they go back and see what they can live without. faster chipsets are casualties.

You might be on to something. Republicans in congress don't even want to pay our soldiers.

Originally Posted by Donkey_Left

You might be on to something. Republicans in congress don't even want to pay our soldiers.

That's a topic for another thread. There's one already running.

This thread is about signal interception from RPV's and other aircraft.

Matt