Intercepted Data

Not Just Drones: Militants Can Snoop on Most U.S. Warplanes

Updating this morning's Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones (WTF?)

From Wired: 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.” ”