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

Thu Dec 22 12:54:42 UTC 2011

First, http://m.sciencemag.org/content/312/5782/1965.abstract

Second, I asked what people would do, not what wasn't done.
On Dec 21, 2011 7:58 AM, "Joshua Carpoff" <joshua at carpoff.net> wrote:

>  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 <jake at spaz.org> wrote:
>
> read the whole story:
>
> http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclusive-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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