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The
problem is in the process of being addressed. But for now, an enormous
security breach is even larger than previously thought.
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.
Since the top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal,
issued strict new guidelines on the use of airstrikes, the United
States has turned nearly every plane in its inventory into an eye in the sky. Sending video down to those ROVER terminals has become job No. 1 for most American air crews flying today.
And U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have come to depend on the feeds. “For sure,” Lt. Col. Greg Harbin told the Los Angeles Times, “I would be dead without this technology.”
Still, some Air Force officers downplayed the significance of the
ROVER’s security hole. “If you’re an insurgent, you need to know when
and where [aircraft] are flying and then be within the line-of-sight
footprint of the feed for any chance of successfully using the
information real-time,” one officer writes. “This is much to do about
nothing. You have bigger fish to fry.”
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