Insurgents intercepted drone spy videos, under the micoscope

by Babel-Fish | December 17, 2009 at 06:35 pm

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It seemed to me at first stupid that the US Military had realized that people could access most satellites a decade ago. Even worst because the technology has now become much more sophisticated. Many people in remote places can not only buy satellite box cards to access a broad group of satellite but now one can buy off the shelf software. There have been stories that the drones have been hacked, not true there is no way to hack using the of the shelf software. It allows one to view what is seen by the drones, nothing else other than downloading on to a hard drive for later viewing.

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This software just downloads from a satellite channel and pretty useless concerning US military drone. However it seems that terrorist had been trying to exploit and find weakness in the system. Due to the terrain it would be very hard to actually trace where the drone was. But it could be possible if the terrorist analyst knew the area like the back of his hand.

I expect the signals to the drones are in fact encrypted, the video channels where not and its obvious that some Afghans had been attracted to the software in the remote villages in valleys because satellite is the only access to TV. So it's not so surprising that the drones video became under scrutiny of the Taliban.

There is a lot of what if's involved but basically I can see why the US military had not been too worried about the video streams until public scrutiny had pointed to the fact it is easy for anyone to obtain the video signal. Reading between the lines its not actually thought to be a priority but they are gradually upgrading the system to include encryption.

I can now see its not really causing much of a problem, its not so stupid, but of course now this factor has become public knowledge precaution need to be taken because of the what if's. Because the main what if is the that a clever analyst, may see a weak point in the system but as I stated earlier that analyst would have to know the area like the back of his/her hand.

The main problem the US military are having is the bad publicity and the administration does not like that also. Of course this is all Obama's fault, yes lets blame Obama.

As an after thought the drones video could be used for propaganda purposes to indicate that civilians are accidentally killed?

WASHINGTON – Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have intercepted live video feeds from Predator drones, a key weapon in a Pentagon spy system that serves as the military's eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection.

Though militants could see the video, there is no evidence they were able to jam the electronic signals from the unmanned aerial craft or take control of the vehicles, a senior defense official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence issues.

Obtaining the video feeds can provide insurgents with critical information about what the military may be targeting, including buildings, roads and other facilities.

Shiite fighters in Iraq used off-the-shelf software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The interception, first done there at least a year ago, was possible because the remotely flown planes had unprotected communications links.

Within the last several months, the military has found evidence of at least one instance where insurgents in Afghanistan also monitored U.S. drone video, a second defense official said. He had no details on how many times it was done in Afghanistan or by which group.