Report: Iran Hacked, Hijacked U.S. Drone

Lets flip the tables here and imagine Iran is flying surveillance drones over mainland USA, gathering photos and who knows what else. Would it be unreasonable to think the USA would try with everything they've got to shoot them down and/or capture them? Who would be the bad guy in that scenario?<p>I find it amusing nobody has thought to question what right the US have to fly a surveillance drone over Iran to spy on the country/people. Furthermore, I think it's pretty clear if you choose to cross a well established border and put something in <i>my</i> country without my permission, for the express purpose of spying on me, you better know I'm going to try hard to capture it as my own.<p>Is it even "legal" for the US to be doing this?<p>Who judges who can spy on who, and who is the "bad" guy when one side captures gear from the other side?

(Prelude edit: A few people seem to be missing the point I'm making here. I know quite a lot about the predator, and a bit about the Global Hawk. I do <i>not</i> know much about the Sentinel. The jab about building a drone with parts on my kitchen table is a joke, meant to illustrate that this is either an <i>absurd</i> level of incompetence on the part of Lockheed Martin [not likely] or the article is incorrect, the latter being most likely. The Global Hawk, for instance, uses inertial navigation as well as GPS. Spoofing GPS against that platform would be annoying to the people controlling it, it would not get you a free Global Hawk. It is a near-certainty that the Sentinel has a similar navigation system.).<p>Some clarification on these drones:<p><i>Some</i> of them require a human being with Line Of Sight to land them. "Predators" (what a lovely name), for instance. This thing is basically a gigantic R/C plane, and a pretty nice one at that.<p>You taxi it to the runway, take it off, and fly it via remote control. There is a human watching it the entire time (although the human may not be in close proximity to the plane. The militarized versions, for instance, have pilots living in Nevada, and planes living in Afghanistan).<p>Another plane, called a "Global Hawk", is much larger, and requires almost no human intervention at all. You open the hanger door, press the go button, and then leave it alone.<p>It taxis <i>itself</i> to the runway, powers up, takes off, flies its mission, comes home, lands, taxis back to the hanger, and powers down.<p>If this article is accurate, it would mean that this drone model requires no human intervention, which makes sense if it's primarily a passive, camera-platform.<p>What becomes <i>really really</i> scary about this is the idea that they're relying <i>solely</i> on GPS to fly.<p>How do I get into defense contracting, again? I have the parts for a "drone" sitting on my kitchen table right now that, from the sound of things, is about navigationally equivalent to this thing.<p>(By that I mean a $30 'duino, $50 worth of gyros and accelerometers, and $60 worth of a GPS. Hey government, here's a cost cutting measure: hire me to build you some drones.)

So, they spoofed GPS and jammed the rest of the communications to make it land automatically. Given that there are test transmitters for GPS devices used when consumer devices are being created it's not a surprise that they managed to do this. Not very long ago there was a GPS jamming exercise in the UK done on a military range.<p>I realize that as a Westerner I shouldn't be rooting for the Iranians but if they did spoof GPS, jam the rest of the communications and get this thing to land thinking it was at its home base then it's at least a neat hack.<p>Also, in the article there's a quote from someone dissing the Iranians' technical ability. This seems like a mistake. Iran is not a 'stone age' country like Afghanistan.

<i>One American analyst ridiculed Iran’s capability, telling Defense News that the loss was “like dropping a Ferrari into an ox-cart technology culture.”</i><p>An ox-cart technology culture that is allied with China and Russia. I hope this kind of hubris is counterbalanced by more realistic attitudes in the defense world.

It is suprising that many americans, for the lack of a better term, seem to be "butthurt" over this event.<p>Look at this news on reddit for example, first it was ridiculed, and speculation was high that it might have been a crash or accident, that the Iranians had luck, and that it in fact never happened, just propaganda. Then the Iranians showed it, and many comments said "its old tech any way". Why the butthurtness?<p>And now, "the takeover wasnt so high tech anyway".

In the early to mid 2000s, the US rendered military aid to Georgia, in both training and equipment. This included unmanned aircraft.<p>In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, and presumably captured some of those aircraft.<p>No security system should rely on the secrecy of its function, but in practice, many do. If any agency in the world can break the security of US UAVs, it'd be Russia.<p>Remind me again how the Russians and Iranians get along?

Relying on GPS or any external source of navigational data is risky. I cannot believe the vehicle didn't have working inertial navigation that would clearly indicate the GPS was off by quite a lot.<p>Simple rule - if you have no contact with home and your GPS says you are a couple hundred miles away from where your inertial navigation, your compass and all visual cues (if cruise missiles have it, so should this bird) tell you should be, something is definitely fishy and you should self destruct.<p>Spoofing GPS signals is an interesting idea, but falling for them continues to be unacceptable for a UAV full of very sensitive information.

This all seems really fishy. You'd think if this was really top-secret level equipment, there would be several failsafes and an inevitable self-destruct mechanism in the event it was out of contact enough to reasonably assume capture. The fact it's wholly intact makes me wonder if it's some sort of honeypot.

I don't quite understand how CS Monitor can vet any source inside the Iranian government as being non propaganda.

Tis the season for peace on Earth, or at least some good sportsmanship.<p>If they hacked it as described, the engineers who pulled it off deserve our congratulations on a hack well played.<p>If it's all some elaborate ruse for the sake of internal PR, well, good to know those exist outside the U.S. also. :)

There is a campaign underway to raise funding for the next round of drone development. These stories are hitting the press to help drum up support for spending on drone R&#38;D and production.<p>There are also stories that are intended to pave the way for drones being used on American soil.

Christian Science Monitor: is this a reputable source known for good journalism?

This page 2 comment is making me not believe what I am reading. Data stream is not encrypted? Can anyone confirm?<p><i>The US military has reportedly been aware of vulnerabilities with pirating unencrypted drone data streams since the Bosnia campaign in the mid-1990s.<p>Top US officials said in 2009 that they were working to encrypt all drone data streams in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – after finding militant laptops loaded with days' worth of data in Iraq – and acknowledged that they were "subject to listening and exploitation."</i><p>edit: fixed the format

Just throwing this out there, maybe the drone was intended to be caught as part of another kind of intelligence gathering operation. It's easy to blame this on incompetence, but the other angle is that the drone being caught was made to look like an accident in order to collect intelligence (gps, audio, etc) from wherever the Iranians took it, and this data could be offloaded to someone that could gain access to the drone. Just a possibility.

this sounds odd. other reports said that the final landing for these drones is done with a local, direct link (which was a possible candidate for how it was hacked), but this article implies (if i am reading it right) that by faking GPS it was misled into thinking it was landing in its normal place.<p>also, in the linked article it says that the underbelly was damaged because the altitudes differed by a few metres, but gps doesn't offer that kind of vertical resolution (as far as i know, particularly not from something that cannot sit in one place and integrate over time. <i>this is (partly) why GPS is not used for landing - it's simply not precise enough</i>).<p>perhaps the gps was spoofed, but it was only part of something more complex? like enabling the radio control for landing because the drone thought it was near the airfield?<p>[edit] this seems to be the original source that mentions direct landing control, although i've never seen that site before (am pretty sure i read it on the bbc or guardian): <a href="http://www.moonofalabama.org/2011/12/how-iran-probably-acquired-a-stealth-drone.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.moonofalabama.org/2011/12/how-iran-probably-acqui...</a>

I don't get it. With a budget of millions for these UAVs was it so hard to fit the thing with an IRS unit, or even an older INS unit to augment the GPS? Then one could add a single if statement checking if the GPS location has diverged greatly from where it was in the last NMEA statement?<p>What am I missing here???

&#62; “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.”<p>The thought of this leads to some conspiratorial thoughts: from various sources, we might know where a missile originated from, but who knows what might happen to it during flight?

I for one welcome the next generation GPS satellites that the military will no doubt now put up.<p>Edit: It appears the first GPS III satellite will be launched in 2014.

It almost seems that someone read my comment here on HN a few days ago:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3330669" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3330669</a>

Why is it unpainted?

I've seen a lot of these drone stories and discussion threads. The most interesting thing about them is the assumption that America has the right to violate other countries territory.

If this is indeed a problem, just put a secure QR code on every runway. Easy enough.<p>HEY ECHELON

This is the joke of the century. LOL

This is what the US congress should be investigating instead of passing bills that have no chance of becoming law or reaffirming "in god we trust".

Why not just EMP it to crash it and collect it?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compres...</a>

Meh, seems very simple to me (after some research).<p>Allow me to speculate.<p>- American Drone was destroyed with a hack tentative<p>- Iran built a replica for internal advertising of nationalism and for international press<p>- America won't comment and say it was a replica because it needs all the uneducated "Right" to believe Iran has some "power" so there is a reason to invade.<p>Come on haven't you guys seeing this movie before??<p>(updated for format)