Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer

[somdfunguy]

Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer - CSMonitor.com

Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.

Gen. Moharam Gholizadeh, the deputy for electronic warfare at the air defense headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), described to Fars News how Iran could alter the path of a GPS-guided missile – a tactic more easily applied to a slower-moving drone.

“We have a project on hand that is one step ahead of jamming, meaning ‘deception’ of the aggressive systems,” said Gholizadeh, such that “we can define our own desired information for it so the path of the missile would change to our desired destination

US officials skeptical of Iran’s capabilities blame a malfunction, but so far can't explain how Iran acquired the drone intact. One American analyst ridiculed Iran’s capability, telling Defense News that the loss was “like dropping a Ferrari into an ox-cart technology culture.

"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."

 

[desertrat]

Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer - CSMonitor.com

The military is not too concerned that happened if they plan to continue flying them in there. Therefore I doubt they hacked it.

 

[somdfunguy]

The military is not too concerned that happened if they plan to continue flying them in there. Therefore I doubt they hacked it.

agreed


Analysts wary of Iran's spy drone hacking claims - Computerworld

 

[Larry Gude]

I'm gonna write books some day!

We knew of the weakness and kept it quiet. We knew they knew and...a trap was set.

They were supposed to 'steal it'. It was supposed to be leaked to the press the moment it happened. Then, we would flip out and accuse them of trying to use it to kill Karzai and destabilize Afghanistan for their own nefarious ends but, THEN we'd re-take control once it was established THEY had 'control' and then we'd use it to kill Dinnerjacket AND blame it on them!!!

And, right at the key moment, Obama folded up and nixed the whole operation and people inside who set all this up are losing their minds and raising holy hell because Obama is having people thrown over board to cover his ass.

 

[Gilligan]

You might do better if you tried writing fiction instead.

 

[somdfunguy]

I'm more interested in the theoretical aspect that it could be done. The fact that they feel they're too low on the food chain to know how to do this is not reassuring.

 

[glhs837]

Hmmm, a more realistic view on this, riffing on Larrys ideas. Could this have been a sort of Trojan Horse? We have seen what Stuxnet (the beautiful piece of programming) did to them. Could this thing be brimming with all sorts of malware?

 

[struggler44]

Time to dump LMT.......

 

[somdfunguy]

Hmmm, a more realistic view on this, riffing on Larrys ideas. Could this have been a sort of Trojan Horse? We have seen what Stuxnet (the beautiful piece of programming) did to them. Could this thing be brimming with all sorts of malware?

I was thinking that too, wouldn't that be great. Next thing you know the drone will split in two and a smaller drone will fly away with the goodies.

 

[glhs837]

Nope, but it would be great if a nasty bit of malware subtly altered all their EW research for a couple of years. If you havent read up on Stuxnet and all that it supposedly did, do so, its really interesting. Shows the capabilities of nation states when it comes to "cyber" war.

 

[somdfunguy]

Nope, but it would be great if a nasty bit of malware subtly altered all their EW research for a couple of years. If you havent read up on Stuxnet and all that it supposedly did, do so, its really interesting. Shows the capabilities of nation states when it comes to "cyber" war.

Oh believe me I have, I spend everyday researching these kinds of things. Its fascinating stuff.

 

[somdfunguy]

More Sykipot Malware Clues Point To China - Security - Attacks/breaches - Informationweek

The Sykipot malware used in recent, targeted attacks against defense contractors appears to have been designed, at least in part, to steal information relating to U.S. military drones and unmanned aerial vehicles.

To date, "there have been a lot of different campaigns with different command-and-control servers," said researchers at Alienvault Labs in a blog post. "The modus operandi is simple, they send emails with a malicious attachment or link, sometimes using a zero-day exploit [on] key employees of different organizations."

The Sykipot malware used in recent targeted attacks involved JavaScript-embedded malicious PDF files that were emailed to targets, and which exploited a zero-day Adobe Reader vulnerability that was recently patched.