Encrypt Keeper

Friend-of-NOH and IT guru Gil Wilson responds below to the WSJ report that insurgents have been hacking U.S. drones…

[The insurgents] didn't hack the drones. They ease dropped on an unencrypted (or badly scrambled) video feed. That's different…

The Pentagon's response? "But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said."

I haven't decided yet if this is the age-old “security through obscurity” line or if the Pentagon is dumb enough to think that people who can make remote bombs with cell phones aren't smart enough to use a satellite dish and laptop to capture over-the-air data.

The U.S. military is a modern marvel. When we show up in an area the airwaves light up like Clark Griswold's house on Christmas Eve. There's no need for sophisticated wire tapping, just put a dipstick in the sky. That's why it's so damn important to encrypt the data. It shouldn't even be a question.

If the drones are sophisticated proprietary technology, as one person in the article states, then they should use pre-existing DOD communications systems that already use sophisticated encryption. If, on the other hand, drones use inexpensive "off-the-shelf" components, as others have said in the past, then they should use inexpensive "off- the-shelf" encryption (that is actually quite good).

Attackerman and Danger Room have more.