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US Navy collisions stoke cyber threat concerns

43 points by stephenboyd 9y ago

andrew-lucker 9y ago
Does anyone have a technical explanation of how gps spoofing works?
- Johnny555 9y ago
  Here's an article on GPS spoofing and some potential countermeasures: http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/protecting-gps-from-spoofers-is-critical-to-the-future-of-navigation http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/protecting-gps-fro...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- blackguardx 9y ago
  I'm not sure this is technical enough, but this gist is as follows. GPS signals are extremely weak. They are below the background noise floor (you can't see them with a spectrum analyzer) and can only be received by convolving with a pseudorandom code (PN code). Because they are so weak, an adversary can overpower them and cause receivers to "lock on" as long as rogue signal is well designed. GPS signals are fairly simple. They mainly encode precise time information from atomic clocks orbiting the earth. By receiving 4 time signals from 4 atomic clocks in known orbits, one's position can be precisely known. This is a hard attack, but not not impossible. The Iranians are rumored to have used this technique to down a stealth drone the US was using for spy purposes.
  - foota 9y ago
    I'm sure it's beyond me without a lot of work, but what makes the attack difficult for someone with the right background?
    - blackguardx 9y ago
      I think this has become much easier with the rise of SDR. You would mainly have to know alot about the orbits of the GPS satellites to be able to convincingly simulate their signals from a given point on the globe.
      - throwaway613834 9y ago
        > You would mainly have to know alot about the orbits of the GPS satellites to be able to convincingly simulate their signals from a given point on the globe. Do GPS receivers validate satellite orbits? Do they even know what all the satellite orbits are supposed to be?
- hokkos 9y ago
  Here is some slides from Defcon 23 : https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2023/DEF%20CON%2023%20presentations/DEFCON-23-Lin-Huang-Qing-Yang-GPS-Spoofing.pdf https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2023/DEF%20CON%2023%20pre... They did a record, replay with a USRP B210 and GPS antenna. And here is a project that generates GPS baseband signal data streams for bladeRF, HackRF, and USRP. https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim
vxxzy 9y ago
If it is indeed GPS spoofing it must be happening to commercial vessels right? Doesn't the US military use a different, more accurate/secure version of GPS? It seems more likely the less secure AIS protocol is somehow being manipulated.
- nradov 9y ago
  Mariners don't rely on AIS for collision avoidance. It's all visual spotting, radar, lights, and horns. Everyone knows that AIS transmitters sometimes fail or get turned off. And the reported position may lag behind the actual position by several minutes.
- sitharus 9y ago
  Yes, the US military uses a different GPS code to the general public. It's more accurate and harder to spoof. However, these collisions could be caused by spoofing the general maritime traffic so the US ships are on the 'correct' course and everyone else is offset.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > However, these collisions could be caused by spoofing the general maritime traffic so the US ships are on the 'correct' course and everyone else is offset. These collisions could not be caused by anything but massive human failure, because while the military may exploit networked electronic conveniences to track expected civilian traffic positions, that's not supposed to be the only system they have. And they'd be useless as warships if that was their only way of detecting larger ships than their own size short of bumping into them.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- blackguardx 9y ago
  GPS can be selectively denied to an area (all but US military hardware) while the US is engaged in combat. There are also military specific parts of GPS that civilian receivers can't access. I don't know if military receivers are ignoring civilian signals, though.
Animats 9y ago
He's just making that stuff up. The US Navy has released surprisingly little info on the Fitzgerald collision. The new "report" is all about damage control after the collision, not the events leading up to it.
yeukhon 9y ago
I am actually more concerned about the 10 missing sailors, not just concerns for their lives, but I am really concerned how they went missing after the collision? The ship's damage is not very bad. I can understand they could have fallen into water, but this doesn't make a lot of sense. If they were facing the impact, they would have run away. If they were in other three directions, then I am surprised that ten sailors got thrown off the deck, and none of them could get back on the water surface. This raises my concern for the ship's rails. --EDIT-- I believe this incident occurred early in the morning around 5:24 a.m and I don't think it was in total darkness. Also, what about the transport ship? Shouldn't they also have the ability to detect (and also human for lookup) since this is one of the busiest lane?
- foota 9y ago
  I read in the other collision that water flooded the rooms very quickly, which makes it difficult to escape.
- justin66 9y ago
  > The ship's damage is not very bad. That's not accurate.
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    Not very bad even though water flooded in. But the ship was still in good condition since they were able to stop the flooding and isn't beyond repair.
    - jdietrich 9y ago
      By design, a modern warship can take an immense amount of damage and remain buoyant. That comes as little consolation to the poor buggers trapped in a flooded compartment.
    - justin66 9y ago
      The ship was hulled below the waterline; this damage is incredibly serious. The best that can be said about it is that the ship was able to return to port under its own power. > the ship was still in good condition This is just a crazy thing to say.
Johnny555 9y ago
Regardless of any GPS spoofing that could be present, it'd be awfully hard to hide the radar return from a large tanker/cargo ship.
basicplus2 9y ago
All ships should be keeping a physical lookout at all times, it can only be complete incompetence at work. Pretty pathetic of a warship cannot steer clear of such a large vessel. Clearly it would pretty easy for an enemy to attack them if they are thus incompetent
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  > All ships should be keeping a physical lookout at all times I know nothing about the military or naval practices but this sounds hard and very costly... you want someone on shift 24/7 with his head constantly rotating watching out in all directions? Or maybe 3-4 people simultaneously looking out each in a single direction? That would mean you have a bunch of people doing literally nothing productive (besides watching) at any given point in time, some of them even being asleep since you want 24/7 shifts... and they have to not get bored or look away for any nontrivial period of time. It seems very difficult.
  - Johnny555 9y ago
    a bunch of people doing literally nothing productive (besides watching) They are not doing "nothing productive", they are keeping watch to prevent exactly this type of accident from happening. Do you really think that the entire ship goes to to sleep at night on a 2 billion dollar naval destroyer while it cruises in a crowded shipping lane? Even the $250M office/residential building where I work has 2 night watchmen and a building engineer or two on duty at all times... and the building is unlikely to have a collision when another building moves into its path.
    - throwaway613834 9y ago
      > Do you really think that the entire ship goes to to sleep at night on a 2 billion dollar naval destroyer while it cruises in a crowded shipping lane? I didn't say they all go to sleep, they probably have lots of things to do at various times. And I wasn't talking about more-sensitive points like crowded shipping lanes. I was just talking about having people on duty to literally keep a watch out over the sea the entire time. Not sure why you twist my words like that. Or you're saying they do have watchmen 24/7 but their watchmen are just blind? How did they manage to collide 4 times this year if they had people watching the sea the whole time? Oh, and don't forget others are suggesting sleep deprivation as the cause. Which is not exactly inconsistent with my point that keeping watch is probably difficult and costly...
cyberferret 9y ago
I am not a naval person by any stretch, but I thought the protocol on any large ship (military or civilian) was to have at least one, if not two people on watch at all times? I would assume a navy ship would have multiple people with eyes 'outside the boat' especially in a busy shipping (and piracy ridden) lane such as the Malacca Straits?
- nradov 9y ago
  US Navy ships underway typically have at least 4 crewmen on watch as dedicated lookouts, plus at least 4 more on the bridge sometimes looking out the windows and someone in CIC watching radar. In high risk situations there may be even more.
hackcasual 9y ago
This is purely uninformed speculation. Radar and eyeballs are sufficient to prevent these types of incidents. Sleep deprivation has continued to be pointed to as a major issue on ships, and yet from the CNO down, this has been ignored and nothing done: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-07/let-our-sailors-sleep https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-07/let-our-s...
- extrapickles 9y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if sleep deprivation was a leading cause. The military in general has a problem with letting people get enough sleep, especially if the personnel are not on the day shift/watch. With two deadly collisions in the same fleet, I bet there is some silly regulation/task that is keeping watch standers from getting enough sleep. It could be as simple as letting sleeping personnel get pulled into working parties as everyone else is on watch or doing repairs/maintenance. I wouldn't be surprised if things got worse as they pile even more training requirements on trying to fix the issue.
jorblumesea 9y ago
Even if they were spoofed, every Navy ship has many people on watch at one time and radar is more than enough to compensate. A more reasonable explanation is exhausted crew and human error.
- rectang 9y ago
  ... which in turn would imply unreasonable schedules and systems which are not robust when faced with inevitable human error. In other words, failures of high level management and system architecture. I await the scapegoating of the crew to protect the higher-ups.
  - grzm 9y ago
    > I await the scapegoating of the crew to protect the higher-ups. Considering the leadership of the Fitzgerald have been removed, why would you expect scapegoating of the crew to occur in this case? > The commanding officer, executive officer and senior non-commissioned officer of the USS Fitzgerald have been removed from their duties for cause amid the fallout surrounding the deadly collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a cargo ship off the coast of Japan on June 17. "We've lost trust and confidence in their ability to lead in those positions and they will not return to the ship," Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William Moran told reporters at the Pentagon late Thursday. The 7th Fleet also said several junior officers were relieved of duty. http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/uss-fitzgerald-leadership-removed/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/uss-fitzgerald-leader...
    - rectang 9y ago
      Do ship commanders such as the removed captain of the Fitzgerald decide staffing levels? If sleep deprivation contributed this accident (as many are speculating), I am nevertheless skeptical that the people who are responsible for systemic lack of sleep will be held accountable.
      - grzm 9y ago
        You mean the speculation mentioned in comments here? This article, which itself is unsubstantiated speculation, makes no such mention. If you're just spitballing, fine, but I don't see any reason to make statements like these without doing some research first, much less express skepticism, particularly when presented with very recent evidence that leadership is being held responsible.
lowbloodsugar 9y ago
Twofer: Not only deflect blame from actual problem but also raise funding for anti-cyberwarfare boondoggle!
- sitkack 9y ago
  Suddenly a 500k PR contract from the Navy lands in his lap.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    The dudes at CrowdStrike are all, "why didn't we think of this?"
hamandcheese 9y ago
> The U.S. military uses encrypted signals for geolocation of vessels, rather than commercial GPS. It seems like a massive oversight to keep encrypted GPS signals for use exclusively for US military. As mentioned in another comment, the collision could have been caused by spoofing the commercial ships GPS rather than a cyber attack on the Navy vessel. The ability to selectively enable GPS in a region for only US military (as mentioned, once again, in another comment) doesn't even seem like that big of a strategic advantage - surely a sophisticated enemy wouldn't rely on GPS, would they? Any strategic advantage doesn't really seem worth the potentially massive damage that could be caused by a large scale spoofing of GPS signals.
- Johnny555 9y ago
  Plus with the advent of Glonass, Galileo, and Beidou, the ability for the USA to turn off GPS has less strategic value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou_Navigation_Satellite_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou_Navigation_Satellite_Sy...
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    That would be true if the US did not have it was not willing to use effective ASAT weapons to also deny opponents the use of GPS alternatives in the event of a war in which they would want to deny GPS.
    - hamandcheese 9y ago
      Surely GPS satellites can also be shot down, no? It seems the best possible outcome might be a single global navigation system that all powers depend on, creating a navigational form of mutually assured destruction, ensuring its continued availability during a time of conflict. That will probably never happen, though.
      - 9y ago
GreaterFool 9y ago
I imagine one could make a modern device that tracks position by watching the sky. I wonder how well could that work in bad weather. Is there any light spectrum of the stars that passes through a serious storm? Humans may be incapable of seeing it but how about advanced telescope/camera?
- dbenjamin 9y ago
  This has existed for quite a while. The SR-71 (introduced in 1966) had an astro-inertial navigation system that tracked stars to reduce error in a standard INS. Using spectrum filters, was able to track stars day and night (and I imagine potentially in bad weather). https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics-nas-14v2-astroinertial-navigation-system https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics...
anovikov 9y ago
A much better explanation for that is that the guys there are being overworked and exhausted. Navy resources are overstretched as there is lack of destroyers due to many years of interruption in DDG construction. Navy has at least 12 destroyers less than it would have if not the catastrophe of Zumwalt class construction.
- yborg 9y ago
  Navy resources are mostly stretched because of the Navy's insistence on launching $30 billion supercarriers to fly $120 million F-35s. You could build 15 or 16 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers for what it's costing (so far) to build the Gerald Ford.
  - anovikov 9y ago
    That is just because it is the first ship in class. Neither Enterprise nor Nimitz came out easy either.
tardygrad 9y ago
This article is just idle speculation with some of the vague 'Russia is behind it' rhetoric we've been seeing over the past few years. Even if someone had developed the capability to spoof military grade GPS why would they use it on a random ship for no reason? That would accomplish nothing while tipping off the military that someone had cracked GPS. Even if this is a GPS problem at all it is more likely to be a bug in the implementation than a targeted attack. By Occam's Razor this is likely just a plain old human error and not some sophisticated conspiracy - someone was negligent and shit hit the fan.
- bhouston 9y ago
  Could they instead spoof the GPS that the other civilian ship was using and guide it into the US ship? That seems like it would be infinitely easier to do. Isn't is also possible to just hack into the computers of the civilian ship as they are likely incredibly insecure and basically do what you want with it? I understand most industry computer control systems incredibly dated and insecure. Just speculation of course.
  - lstyls 9y ago
    Navy attack ships are much, much faster and more maneuverable than cargo ships or takers. They could have outmaneuvered one easily if they wanted to.
  - wwwv 9y ago
    The US military uses encrypted GPS, not the civilian one.
  - tardygrad 9y ago
    Maybe, but why do it? I see no possible motive here.
- Iv 9y ago
  I agree, that makes little sense of giving away such a capacity outside of an armed conflict. Anyway, there were 4 collisions in this area this year (we mostly talked about the 2 with loss of life) so there may still be a more fundamental problem to solve than individual negligence. Just to play devil's advocate, here are a few hypothesis that could make malice have more sense in that case: - The enemy has the capacity to spoof this but knows that it will soon be removed. May as well use it. - The enemy knows that this vulnerability will not work on ships that are in conflict mode and is interested in removing two ships from the existing fleet in preparation of a conflict. Pretty weak hypothesis if you ask me. Anyway, I can't say I am sad at seeing media and the general public talk a bit more seriously about cyber security.
zaroth 9y ago
Unfortunately I see 'complete incompetence' as the only rational explanation. This is just the latest in a string of naval disasters this year which are not just confounding and bizarre rank amateur displays, but have resulted in loss of life. At this point, the American people deserve nothing less than an extraordinary response and complete accountability throughout the ranks. When destroyers are getting rammed by cargo ships, and guided missile cruisers are colliding with fishing bots, and running aground, we have a systemic problem with training, discipline, or protocol, likely all three. You simply cannot blame broken GPS on getting your destroyer rammed by a 20,000 ton cargo ship. Our enlisted deserve better, and Admirals should be getting shit-canned for this.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  I vaguely recall a story, maybe a decade or two back, about a naval wargaming exercise in which the red team (simulating the enemies of the US) approached a zillion-dollar warship in rubber rafts that didn't trip any of its cutting-edge electronics and "disabled" it with nothing but some men and some simulated explosives. They were accused of cheating, the officers upbraided, and the whole scenario rewound to erase the embarrassing incident.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    Out of curiosity, how doe they go up the ship when they approach it with a raft? Do they manage to tie a rope around something in the deck somehow, or do they cut a hole in the ship...?
    - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
      I don't remember the details, unfortunately. They may have just planted (simulated) shaped charges directly on the hull, or they may have gone through some rigamarole with grappling hooks or something. It occurs to me that you could probably climb the outside of a ship with sci-fi electromagnetic gloves/boots, but I've never heard of anyone actually making anything like that.
trhway 9y ago
The crew uses cellphones (browsing Singapore Tinder is a really good way to kill time while not falling asleep during the watch at 4am - makes for a peculiar case of "texting while driving" though). Coming from the providers in the region, with many directly or indirectly owned/invested/hacked by China, the phones are already hacked, and they provide a pretty good attack vector on any wireless ship system and after that on any other that it is connected too. Though my bet here is on pretty obvious Chinese spoofing of the destroyers' GPS - it being supposedly military grade makes it the last thing to be looked at.
- Johnny555 9y ago
  Do you have any evidence that any networks accessible by personal crew devices (i.e. cellphones) are connected at all to the ship's control networks?
  - trhway 9y ago
    are you kidding? Check out "smart ship" for example: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ddg-51-upgrade.htm http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ddg-51-u... Everything integrated, and as long as at least one component talks wireless ... and there are actually a bunch of them, and as i mentioned, being an actual smartphone is only one of the features of those cheap smartphones bought at the local port :). One can easily imagine that the ships which rammed (and/or some other ships close by) the destroyers could have carried cell towers and/or GPS spoof-er which were promptly, say, dumped overboard. And leaving all that hi-tech aside - plain old $2K/bottle cognac, drink of choice of the 7th fleet :) https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2017/03/face-navys-7th-fleet-scandal-malignant/ https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2017/03/fa... , http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2016/05/27/the-man-who-seduced-the-7th-fleet http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2016/05/27/th...
    - Johnny555 9y ago
      I don't see anything there that suggests that the ship runs on a wifi network. The closest thing I saw was "Shipwide interior wireless communications system", but that doesn't imply Wifi, and is likely just a digital trunking radio system -- not something a consumer Wifi device will be able to connect to.
forapurpose 9y ago
"Cyber" seems to have taken on the role formerly filled by angry divine beings: If something happens and we don't know what it is or why it happened, we used to think someone angered a god or an ancestor. Now, it's cyber. Don't forget that several wars have started based on misattributed events. In just the U.S.: The Maine and the Spanish-American War, the Gulf of Tonkin and the Vietnam War, Iraq's WMD program and al-Qaeda alliance and the Iraq War ... And attribution is especially difficult in attacks on computer systems. An enterprising, well-resourced actor could provoke war between enemies or division between allies with a well-crafted attack.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Don't forget six years ago when we destroyed Libya because some exile in Switzerland claimed Qaddafi was being extra super mean, only he wasn't. How long until we admit that Assad wasn't connected to the Syrian gas "attacks"? "Misattributed" is soft-pedaling it. The war pigs tell these lies so they can make money by killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > we destroyed Libya The U.S. and allies helped drive Qaddafi from power. They didn't physically destroy Libya, though maybe politically. > because some exile in Switzerland claimed Qaddafi was being extra super mean, only he wasn't. Qaddafi's human rights record was very well known for a long time, and he also made enemies in the West by supporting terrorists and destroying a commercial airliner in flight, killing its passengers. The immediate cause of the West's intervention was that Qaddafi was openly about to destroy rebels (including civilians, IIRC). I'm not sure how much of a role this exile played.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      Educate yourself: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-debacle https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-d... http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-humanitarian-intervention/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-hu... Holy shit those lies were so transparent that even staid mainstream media brands felt compelled to debunk them! Even if those lies had been true, why did we care so much about Libya and not about nineteen other brutal corrupt dictators in Africa and around the world? Qaddafi had already given up his nuclear program, and DPRK rightly points out that that mistake cost him everything. How convenient for those who benefit from both the current European refugee crisis and from escalated conflict in Korea!
forapurpose 9y ago
The U.S. government's budget sequester has forced the military to greatly reduce training and therefore readiness. The Air Force attributed recent fighter plane accidents to a lack of training. I wonder if these accidents are related.
SuperChihuahua 9y ago
"#USSJohnSMcCain suffered steering loss approaching Strait of Malacca, unclear why crew couldn't utilize back-up -Navy official" https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/899793613126864897 https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/899793613126864897

43 points by stephenboyd 9y ago

andrew-lucker 9y ago

Does anyone have a technical explanation of how gps spoofing works?

Johnny555 9y ago
Here's an article on GPS spoofing and some potential countermeasures: http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/protecting-gps-from-spoofers-is-critical-to-the-future-of-navigation http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/protecting-gps-fro...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
blackguardx 9y ago
I'm not sure this is technical enough, but this gist is as follows. GPS signals are extremely weak. They are below the background noise floor (you can't see them with a spectrum analyzer) and can only be received by convolving with a pseudorandom code (PN code). Because they are so weak, an adversary can overpower them and cause receivers to "lock on" as long as rogue signal is well designed. GPS signals are fairly simple. They mainly encode precise time information from atomic clocks orbiting the earth. By receiving 4 time signals from 4 atomic clocks in known orbits, one's position can be precisely known. This is a hard attack, but not not impossible. The Iranians are rumored to have used this technique to down a stealth drone the US was using for spy purposes.
- foota 9y ago
  I'm sure it's beyond me without a lot of work, but what makes the attack difficult for someone with the right background?
  - blackguardx 9y ago
    I think this has become much easier with the rise of SDR. You would mainly have to know alot about the orbits of the GPS satellites to be able to convincingly simulate their signals from a given point on the globe.
    - throwaway613834 9y ago
      > You would mainly have to know alot about the orbits of the GPS satellites to be able to convincingly simulate their signals from a given point on the globe. Do GPS receivers validate satellite orbits? Do they even know what all the satellite orbits are supposed to be?
hokkos 9y ago
Here is some slides from Defcon 23 : https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2023/DEF%20CON%2023%20presentations/DEFCON-23-Lin-Huang-Qing-Yang-GPS-Spoofing.pdf https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2023/DEF%20CON%2023%20pre... They did a record, replay with a USRP B210 and GPS antenna. And here is a project that generates GPS baseband signal data streams for bladeRF, HackRF, and USRP. https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim

vxxzy 9y ago

If it is indeed GPS spoofing it must be happening to commercial vessels right? Doesn't the US military use a different, more accurate/secure version of GPS? It seems more likely the less secure AIS protocol is somehow being manipulated.

nradov 9y ago
Mariners don't rely on AIS for collision avoidance. It's all visual spotting, radar, lights, and horns. Everyone knows that AIS transmitters sometimes fail or get turned off. And the reported position may lag behind the actual position by several minutes.
sitharus 9y ago
Yes, the US military uses a different GPS code to the general public. It's more accurate and harder to spoof. However, these collisions could be caused by spoofing the general maritime traffic so the US ships are on the 'correct' course and everyone else is offset.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > However, these collisions could be caused by spoofing the general maritime traffic so the US ships are on the 'correct' course and everyone else is offset. These collisions could not be caused by anything but massive human failure, because while the military may exploit networked electronic conveniences to track expected civilian traffic positions, that's not supposed to be the only system they have. And they'd be useless as warships if that was their only way of detecting larger ships than their own size short of bumping into them.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
blackguardx 9y ago
GPS can be selectively denied to an area (all but US military hardware) while the US is engaged in combat. There are also military specific parts of GPS that civilian receivers can't access. I don't know if military receivers are ignoring civilian signals, though.

Animats 9y ago

He's just making that stuff up. The US Navy has released surprisingly little info on the Fitzgerald collision. The new "report" is all about damage control after the collision, not the events leading up to it.

yeukhon 9y ago

I am actually more concerned about the 10 missing sailors, not just concerns for their lives, but I am really concerned how they went missing after the collision? The ship's damage is not very bad. I can understand they could have fallen into water, but this doesn't make a lot of sense. If they were facing the impact, they would have run away. If they were in other three directions, then I am surprised that ten sailors got thrown off the deck, and none of them could get back on the water surface. This raises my concern for the ship's rails. --EDIT-- I believe this incident occurred early in the morning around 5:24 a.m and I don't think it was in total darkness. Also, what about the transport ship? Shouldn't they also have the ability to detect (and also human for lookup) since this is one of the busiest lane?

foota 9y ago
I read in the other collision that water flooded the rooms very quickly, which makes it difficult to escape.
justin66 9y ago
> The ship's damage is not very bad. That's not accurate.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  Not very bad even though water flooded in. But the ship was still in good condition since they were able to stop the flooding and isn't beyond repair.
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    By design, a modern warship can take an immense amount of damage and remain buoyant. That comes as little consolation to the poor buggers trapped in a flooded compartment.
  - justin66 9y ago
    The ship was hulled below the waterline; this damage is incredibly serious. The best that can be said about it is that the ship was able to return to port under its own power. > the ship was still in good condition This is just a crazy thing to say.

Johnny555 9y ago

Regardless of any GPS spoofing that could be present, it'd be awfully hard to hide the radar return from a large tanker/cargo ship.

basicplus2 9y ago

All ships should be keeping a physical lookout at all times, it can only be complete incompetence at work. Pretty pathetic of a warship cannot steer clear of such a large vessel. Clearly it would pretty easy for an enemy to attack them if they are thus incompetent

throwaway613834 9y ago
> All ships should be keeping a physical lookout at all times I know nothing about the military or naval practices but this sounds hard and very costly... you want someone on shift 24/7 with his head constantly rotating watching out in all directions? Or maybe 3-4 people simultaneously looking out each in a single direction? That would mean you have a bunch of people doing literally nothing productive (besides watching) at any given point in time, some of them even being asleep since you want 24/7 shifts... and they have to not get bored or look away for any nontrivial period of time. It seems very difficult.
- Johnny555 9y ago
  a bunch of people doing literally nothing productive (besides watching) They are not doing "nothing productive", they are keeping watch to prevent exactly this type of accident from happening. Do you really think that the entire ship goes to to sleep at night on a 2 billion dollar naval destroyer while it cruises in a crowded shipping lane? Even the $250M office/residential building where I work has 2 night watchmen and a building engineer or two on duty at all times... and the building is unlikely to have a collision when another building moves into its path.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    > Do you really think that the entire ship goes to to sleep at night on a 2 billion dollar naval destroyer while it cruises in a crowded shipping lane? I didn't say they all go to sleep, they probably have lots of things to do at various times. And I wasn't talking about more-sensitive points like crowded shipping lanes. I was just talking about having people on duty to literally keep a watch out over the sea the entire time. Not sure why you twist my words like that. Or you're saying they do have watchmen 24/7 but their watchmen are just blind? How did they manage to collide 4 times this year if they had people watching the sea the whole time? Oh, and don't forget others are suggesting sleep deprivation as the cause. Which is not exactly inconsistent with my point that keeping watch is probably difficult and costly...

cyberferret 9y ago

I am not a naval person by any stretch, but I thought the protocol on any large ship (military or civilian) was to have at least one, if not two people on watch at all times? I would assume a navy ship would have multiple people with eyes 'outside the boat' especially in a busy shipping (and piracy ridden) lane such as the Malacca Straits?

nradov 9y ago
US Navy ships underway typically have at least 4 crewmen on watch as dedicated lookouts, plus at least 4 more on the bridge sometimes looking out the windows and someone in CIC watching radar. In high risk situations there may be even more.

hackcasual 9y ago

This is purely uninformed speculation. Radar and eyeballs are sufficient to prevent these types of incidents. Sleep deprivation has continued to be pointed to as a major issue on ships, and yet from the CNO down, this has been ignored and nothing done: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-07/let-our-sailors-sleep https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-07/let-our-s...

extrapickles 9y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if sleep deprivation was a leading cause. The military in general has a problem with letting people get enough sleep, especially if the personnel are not on the day shift/watch. With two deadly collisions in the same fleet, I bet there is some silly regulation/task that is keeping watch standers from getting enough sleep. It could be as simple as letting sleeping personnel get pulled into working parties as everyone else is on watch or doing repairs/maintenance. I wouldn't be surprised if things got worse as they pile even more training requirements on trying to fix the issue.

jorblumesea 9y ago

Even if they were spoofed, every Navy ship has many people on watch at one time and radar is more than enough to compensate. A more reasonable explanation is exhausted crew and human error.

rectang 9y ago
... which in turn would imply unreasonable schedules and systems which are not robust when faced with inevitable human error. In other words, failures of high level management and system architecture. I await the scapegoating of the crew to protect the higher-ups.
- grzm 9y ago
  > I await the scapegoating of the crew to protect the higher-ups. Considering the leadership of the Fitzgerald have been removed, why would you expect scapegoating of the crew to occur in this case? > The commanding officer, executive officer and senior non-commissioned officer of the USS Fitzgerald have been removed from their duties for cause amid the fallout surrounding the deadly collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a cargo ship off the coast of Japan on June 17. "We've lost trust and confidence in their ability to lead in those positions and they will not return to the ship," Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William Moran told reporters at the Pentagon late Thursday. The 7th Fleet also said several junior officers were relieved of duty. http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/uss-fitzgerald-leadership-removed/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/uss-fitzgerald-leader...
  - rectang 9y ago
    Do ship commanders such as the removed captain of the Fitzgerald decide staffing levels? If sleep deprivation contributed this accident (as many are speculating), I am nevertheless skeptical that the people who are responsible for systemic lack of sleep will be held accountable.
    - grzm 9y ago
      You mean the speculation mentioned in comments here? This article, which itself is unsubstantiated speculation, makes no such mention. If you're just spitballing, fine, but I don't see any reason to make statements like these without doing some research first, much less express skepticism, particularly when presented with very recent evidence that leadership is being held responsible.

lowbloodsugar 9y ago

Twofer: Not only deflect blame from actual problem but also raise funding for anti-cyberwarfare boondoggle!

sitkack 9y ago
Suddenly a 500k PR contract from the Navy lands in his lap.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  The dudes at CrowdStrike are all, "why didn't we think of this?"

hamandcheese 9y ago

> The U.S. military uses encrypted signals for geolocation of vessels, rather than commercial GPS. It seems like a massive oversight to keep encrypted GPS signals for use exclusively for US military. As mentioned in another comment, the collision could have been caused by spoofing the commercial ships GPS rather than a cyber attack on the Navy vessel. The ability to selectively enable GPS in a region for only US military (as mentioned, once again, in another comment) doesn't even seem like that big of a strategic advantage - surely a sophisticated enemy wouldn't rely on GPS, would they? Any strategic advantage doesn't really seem worth the potentially massive damage that could be caused by a large scale spoofing of GPS signals.

Johnny555 9y ago
Plus with the advent of Glonass, Galileo, and Beidou, the ability for the USA to turn off GPS has less strategic value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou_Navigation_Satellite_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou_Navigation_Satellite_Sy...
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  That would be true if the US did not have it was not willing to use effective ASAT weapons to also deny opponents the use of GPS alternatives in the event of a war in which they would want to deny GPS.
  - hamandcheese 9y ago
    Surely GPS satellites can also be shot down, no? It seems the best possible outcome might be a single global navigation system that all powers depend on, creating a navigational form of mutually assured destruction, ensuring its continued availability during a time of conflict. That will probably never happen, though.
    - 9y ago

GreaterFool 9y ago

I imagine one could make a modern device that tracks position by watching the sky. I wonder how well could that work in bad weather. Is there any light spectrum of the stars that passes through a serious storm? Humans may be incapable of seeing it but how about advanced telescope/camera?

dbenjamin 9y ago
This has existed for quite a while. The SR-71 (introduced in 1966) had an astro-inertial navigation system that tracked stars to reduce error in a standard INS. Using spectrum filters, was able to track stars day and night (and I imagine potentially in bad weather). https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics-nas-14v2-astroinertial-navigation-system https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics...

anovikov 9y ago

A much better explanation for that is that the guys there are being overworked and exhausted. Navy resources are overstretched as there is lack of destroyers due to many years of interruption in DDG construction. Navy has at least 12 destroyers less than it would have if not the catastrophe of Zumwalt class construction.

yborg 9y ago
Navy resources are mostly stretched because of the Navy's insistence on launching $30 billion supercarriers to fly $120 million F-35s. You could build 15 or 16 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers for what it's costing (so far) to build the Gerald Ford.
- anovikov 9y ago
  That is just because it is the first ship in class. Neither Enterprise nor Nimitz came out easy either.

tardygrad 9y ago

This article is just idle speculation with some of the vague 'Russia is behind it' rhetoric we've been seeing over the past few years. Even if someone had developed the capability to spoof military grade GPS why would they use it on a random ship for no reason? That would accomplish nothing while tipping off the military that someone had cracked GPS. Even if this is a GPS problem at all it is more likely to be a bug in the implementation than a targeted attack. By Occam's Razor this is likely just a plain old human error and not some sophisticated conspiracy - someone was negligent and shit hit the fan.

bhouston 9y ago
Could they instead spoof the GPS that the other civilian ship was using and guide it into the US ship? That seems like it would be infinitely easier to do. Isn't is also possible to just hack into the computers of the civilian ship as they are likely incredibly insecure and basically do what you want with it? I understand most industry computer control systems incredibly dated and insecure. Just speculation of course.
- lstyls 9y ago
  Navy attack ships are much, much faster and more maneuverable than cargo ships or takers. They could have outmaneuvered one easily if they wanted to.
- wwwv 9y ago
  The US military uses encrypted GPS, not the civilian one.
- tardygrad 9y ago
  Maybe, but why do it? I see no possible motive here.
Iv 9y ago
I agree, that makes little sense of giving away such a capacity outside of an armed conflict. Anyway, there were 4 collisions in this area this year (we mostly talked about the 2 with loss of life) so there may still be a more fundamental problem to solve than individual negligence. Just to play devil's advocate, here are a few hypothesis that could make malice have more sense in that case: - The enemy has the capacity to spoof this but knows that it will soon be removed. May as well use it. - The enemy knows that this vulnerability will not work on ships that are in conflict mode and is interested in removing two ships from the existing fleet in preparation of a conflict. Pretty weak hypothesis if you ask me. Anyway, I can't say I am sad at seeing media and the general public talk a bit more seriously about cyber security.

zaroth 9y ago

Unfortunately I see 'complete incompetence' as the only rational explanation. This is just the latest in a string of naval disasters this year which are not just confounding and bizarre rank amateur displays, but have resulted in loss of life. At this point, the American people deserve nothing less than an extraordinary response and complete accountability throughout the ranks. When destroyers are getting rammed by cargo ships, and guided missile cruisers are colliding with fishing bots, and running aground, we have a systemic problem with training, discipline, or protocol, likely all three. You simply cannot blame broken GPS on getting your destroyer rammed by a 20,000 ton cargo ship. Our enlisted deserve better, and Admirals should be getting shit-canned for this.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago
I vaguely recall a story, maybe a decade or two back, about a naval wargaming exercise in which the red team (simulating the enemies of the US) approached a zillion-dollar warship in rubber rafts that didn't trip any of its cutting-edge electronics and "disabled" it with nothing but some men and some simulated explosives. They were accused of cheating, the officers upbraided, and the whole scenario rewound to erase the embarrassing incident.
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, how doe they go up the ship when they approach it with a raft? Do they manage to tie a rope around something in the deck somehow, or do they cut a hole in the ship...?
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    I don't remember the details, unfortunately. They may have just planted (simulated) shaped charges directly on the hull, or they may have gone through some rigamarole with grappling hooks or something. It occurs to me that you could probably climb the outside of a ship with sci-fi electromagnetic gloves/boots, but I've never heard of anyone actually making anything like that.

trhway 9y ago

The crew uses cellphones (browsing Singapore Tinder is a really good way to kill time while not falling asleep during the watch at 4am - makes for a peculiar case of "texting while driving" though). Coming from the providers in the region, with many directly or indirectly owned/invested/hacked by China, the phones are already hacked, and they provide a pretty good attack vector on any wireless ship system and after that on any other that it is connected too. Though my bet here is on pretty obvious Chinese spoofing of the destroyers' GPS - it being supposedly military grade makes it the last thing to be looked at.

Johnny555 9y ago
Do you have any evidence that any networks accessible by personal crew devices (i.e. cellphones) are connected at all to the ship's control networks?
- trhway 9y ago
  are you kidding? Check out "smart ship" for example: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ddg-51-upgrade.htm http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ddg-51-u... Everything integrated, and as long as at least one component talks wireless ... and there are actually a bunch of them, and as i mentioned, being an actual smartphone is only one of the features of those cheap smartphones bought at the local port :). One can easily imagine that the ships which rammed (and/or some other ships close by) the destroyers could have carried cell towers and/or GPS spoof-er which were promptly, say, dumped overboard. And leaving all that hi-tech aside - plain old $2K/bottle cognac, drink of choice of the 7th fleet :) https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2017/03/face-navys-7th-fleet-scandal-malignant/ https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2017/03/fa... , http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2016/05/27/the-man-who-seduced-the-7th-fleet http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2016/05/27/th...
  - Johnny555 9y ago
    I don't see anything there that suggests that the ship runs on a wifi network. The closest thing I saw was "Shipwide interior wireless communications system", but that doesn't imply Wifi, and is likely just a digital trunking radio system -- not something a consumer Wifi device will be able to connect to.

forapurpose 9y ago

"Cyber" seems to have taken on the role formerly filled by angry divine beings: If something happens and we don't know what it is or why it happened, we used to think someone angered a god or an ancestor. Now, it's cyber. Don't forget that several wars have started based on misattributed events. In just the U.S.: The Maine and the Spanish-American War, the Gulf of Tonkin and the Vietnam War, Iraq's WMD program and al-Qaeda alliance and the Iraq War ... And attribution is especially difficult in attacks on computer systems. An enterprising, well-resourced actor could provoke war between enemies or division between allies with a well-crafted attack.

jessaustin 9y ago
Don't forget six years ago when we destroyed Libya because some exile in Switzerland claimed Qaddafi was being extra super mean, only he wasn't. How long until we admit that Assad wasn't connected to the Syrian gas "attacks"? "Misattributed" is soft-pedaling it. The war pigs tell these lies so they can make money by killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > we destroyed Libya The U.S. and allies helped drive Qaddafi from power. They didn't physically destroy Libya, though maybe politically. > because some exile in Switzerland claimed Qaddafi was being extra super mean, only he wasn't. Qaddafi's human rights record was very well known for a long time, and he also made enemies in the West by supporting terrorists and destroying a commercial airliner in flight, killing its passengers. The immediate cause of the West's intervention was that Qaddafi was openly about to destroy rebels (including civilians, IIRC). I'm not sure how much of a role this exile played.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    Educate yourself: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-debacle https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-d... http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-humanitarian-intervention/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-hu... Holy shit those lies were so transparent that even staid mainstream media brands felt compelled to debunk them! Even if those lies had been true, why did we care so much about Libya and not about nineteen other brutal corrupt dictators in Africa and around the world? Qaddafi had already given up his nuclear program, and DPRK rightly points out that that mistake cost him everything. How convenient for those who benefit from both the current European refugee crisis and from escalated conflict in Korea!

forapurpose 9y ago

The U.S. government's budget sequester has forced the military to greatly reduce training and therefore readiness. The Air Force attributed recent fighter plane accidents to a lack of training. I wonder if these accidents are related.

SuperChihuahua 9y ago

"#USSJohnSMcCain suffered steering loss approaching Strait of Malacca, unclear why crew couldn't utilize back-up -Navy official" https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/899793613126864897 https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/899793613126864897