[Noisebridge-discuss] Iran hacked US drone by spoofing GPS, jamming control signals

Wed Dec 21 15:58:54 UTC 2011

  That is so weak!  This is what we pay billions of dollars for?

I suspect they spent lots and lots of time working out
"least-worst" responses to various failure modes all while trying
to keep the final cost of production under some insanely small
figure. First, assuming navigation information was still
available via GPS (it wasn't) while comms were disabled in a
military situation the very last thing you want is a
non-communicative aircraft to navigate back to base. Nevermind
the air traffic problem that could allow one mission failure to
cascade into multiple delays for other missions unrelated other
than being based from the same airfield, assuming IFF is
non-communicative for the same reason (very reasonable) you have
to allocate an expensive resource towards manual identification,
preferably as far out as possible. This usually means a human
life rushing to get into the air (or even more costly if
loitering on standby on rotation) carried by a very fast jet that
costs a lot of money per second of operation, carrying a pilot
who may be flying into a trap.

Basically any cheap UAV is programmed to navigate back to base
when comms are lost is cheap no more...if you still had previous
Nav info, you wouldn't want it to be used.

Using autonomous terrain identification as a third source of
navigation information would be very costly to add to a UAV
(currently they're custom built for each aircraft system, they
rely on sophisticated radar which UAV's do not possess, and the
focus is more on terrain avoidance/low flying under a general
heading than navigation). As Moore's law progresses I'm sure
someday (a decade perhaps?) this will become an option even on
aircraft as cheap as a UAV.

---snip

  A kid with a map, a clock, and a compass could figure out how
  to navigate with out GPS and an ant can do it all with dead
  reckoning.  You mean to tell me a robot that can store gigs of
  spy data can't compare it's previous flight path with incoming
  GPS data?

---snip

None of the architecture involves "storing gigs of spy data" on
the aircraft. The only storage is on the ground, where its both
cheaper, review involves less latency/less points of failure and
is therefore more useful.

Ant's don't use dead reckoning. They use chemical trails (the
poor little guys don't even have direction or distance
information, they just know if they're on the trail or not). I
guess a UAV could be retrofitted to leave a smoke trail and
follow that back to base if the other two sources of Nav data
fail (that would totally be the coolest line following robot
yet!) but using the navigation technique of the ant in the air
probably won't transfer very well. And returning to base while
lacking comms is of course undesirable, and chemical trails can
be spoofed as well once you're jamming the primary Nav methods.

Using celestial information (what time is it/where's the sun or
where are a couple bright known radio sources) might be good
enough (and cheap enough) way to add as a third source of Nav
data, not precise like the two primary methods but good enough at
least determine the general area that the emergency landing is
attempted, and computationally doable right now. Although again,
like GPS celestial data depends on very weak signals (at
nighttime anyway), jammed using trivial wattage.

Not saying that we couldn't come up with an innovative solution,
just saying that the guys who spent time pounding away at these
problems probably aren't "so weak" or particularly deserving of
criticism.

The attack vector was on the Nav data. Making this more robust
(or less critical) is where the improvement is needed. One
out-of-the box idea might be to have some method of having the
aircraft be able to self-destruct in the air with no heavy
objects (engine block) remaining to fall to earth and hit
something unintended?

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011, at 10:08, Corey McGuire wrote:

  That is so weak!  This is what we pay billions of dollars
  for?  A kid with a map, a clock, and a compass could figure
  out how to navigate with out GPS and an ant can do it all with
  dead reckoning.  You mean to tell me a robot that can store
  gigs of spy data can't compare it's previous flight path with
  incoming GPS data?
  Hey Swarmies!  What would you have done to prevent such a
  simple take over of Military grade robotics?

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 4:59 PM, Jake <[1]jake at spaz.org> wrote:

  read the whole story:
  [2]http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclus
  ive-Iran-hijacked-US-drone-says-Iranian-engineer-Video
  Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones
  and a
  technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September,
  the Iranian
  specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to
  make it land
  in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in
  Afghanistan.
  "The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian
  engineer told the
  Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of
  Iran's
  "electronic ambush" of the highly classified US drone. "By
  putting noise
  [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into
  autopilot. This
  is where the bird loses its brain."
  The "spoofing" technique that the Iranians used -- which took
  into account
  precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and
  longitudinal data
  made the drone "land on its own where we wanted it to, without
  having to
  crack the remote-control signals and communications" from the
  US control
  center, says the engineer.
  ...
  Prior to the disappearance of the stealth drone earlier this
  month, Irans
  electronic warfare capabilities were largely unknown  and
  often dismissed.
  "We all feel drunk [with happiness] now," says the Iranian
  engineer. "Have
  you ever had a new laptop? Imagine that excitement multiplied
  many-fold."
  When the Revolutionary Guard first recovered the drone, they
  were aware it
  might be rigged to self-destruct, but they "were so excited
  they could not
  stay away."
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  scuss

  --
  Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no
  simpler - [5]Albert Einstein
  Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication - [6]Leonardo Da
  Vinci
  Perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add,
  but when there is nothing left to take away - [7]Antoine de
  Saint Exupéry
  Keep It Simple Stupid - [8]Kelly Johnson
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References

1. mailto:jake at spaz.org
2. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclusive-Iran-hijacked-US-drone-says-Iranian-engineer-Video
3. mailto:Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
4. https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Da_Vinci
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint_Exup%C3%A9ry
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Johnson
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