Iraqi Insurgents Hacking Drone Video

Iranian-backed Shiite fighters in Iraq have been hacking the live video feeds from U.S. unmanned drones according to senior defense officials. The Wall Street Journal reports that the insurgents are using a Russian-made, off-the-shelf program called SkyGrabber to view the non-encrypted information coming from the drones.

Officials say that there have been no reports of insurgents interfering with the flights, and also assure that no harm has come to our troops and that no missions have been compromised as a result of the security breach.

“That may be true today, but may not be the case in future conflicts,” remarks Bill Roggio of LongWarJournal.

Roggio speculates:

Don’t be surprised if you read a story in the next few days or weeks saying that elements within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency have been monitoring US Predator and Reaper feeds, and relaying targeting information to al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. I have heard far too many stories about how senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders miraculously avoided attacks and left the target sites just minutes before the strikes. The officials repeatedly told me that they believed the anti-US elements in the ISI were tipping off the terrorist commanders before the strikes.

Many hours – even days – worth of recorded drone video feeds have been found on captured insurgent computers operating in Iraq, and sources say that feeds have also been intercepted by enemies operating in Afghanistan. According to WSJ‘s sources, the Pentagon has known of the encryption vulnerability since the Bosnia campaign during the 1990’s, but assumed that our enemies would not have the wherewithal to intercept the signals.

If the Pentagon is going to assume anything, they should be assuming that our enemies will compromise our communications, and design systems with that possibility in mind.