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Key point: this is from Taiwan. Taiwan faces a very real threat of literal invasion by china. Footage, any footage, would be of interest to chinese military p

Key point: this is from Taiwan. Taiwan faces a very real threat of literal invasion by china. Footage, any footage, would be of interest to chinese military planners. The location of small bridges, the state of private roads, whether fields are flooded ... if you are planning a ground invasion you cannot have too much terrain information. But no, that doesnt mean every chinese drone is a threat everywhere. The chinese are not going to backdoor a drone to get footage of some kid's pot plants behind a barn in Iowa.

leemailll 5y ago
oh yeah, sounds like china can't afford a spy satellite
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Satellite images are to drone footage what Poleroid is to 4k hdr. Both are images but that is where all practical similarity ends.
  - slimsag 5y ago
    I wonder how long this will be true. Right now I think the US has 10cm/pixel resolution, but I imagine it's not long before that is far better? It might already be, we just wouldn't know about it
    - loonster 5y ago
      We got the Hubble after they made spy satellites about the same size. Maybe there is the equivalent of the JWST looking down at us?
      - mhh__ 5y ago
        JWST is fairly old tech now so probably better - by better I mean in some colloquial sense based on the passage of time, i.e. JWST would be pretty useless pointed at the earth one imagines.
        loonster 5y ago
        Pointed at earth from k2 it would be useless. But a similar diameter in the same orbit as current spy satelites may be able to resolve objects 1/3 of the size. If OP is correct about 10cm, that would place it at around 3.7cm. It still is incredibly poor compared to what a high flying aircraft could capture, much less a drone spraying chemicals.
        sandworm101 5y ago
        There are other considerations. The atmosphere is wobbly. You can have a mirror 100f across. That won't help the distortion. The only option is active optics, mirrors that adjust in real time, something very hard to on the ground let alone in space.
      - sandworm101 5y ago
        JWST would be totally useless as a spy satellite. It sees in IR. It is in space specifically because IR does not penetrate the atmosphere very well. That applies when looking down equally as up. Everything from the mirror and sensors to the entire cooling operation is optimized to see that IR blocked by earths atmosphere. So any spysat version wanting to actually see through that atmosphere would share almost nothing in terms of design or parts. This is what real spysats looks like. They make JWST look like a toy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite) "is according to NRO director Bruce Carlson "(...) the largest satellite in the world".[3] It is believed that this refers to the diameter of the main antenna, which might be well in excess of 100 m (330 ft)."
        jrockway 5y ago
        IR is how satellites see clouds at night. Seems to work pretty well.
        sandworm101 5y ago
        Weather-related sats see the clouds because IR is blocked by moisture, the stuff that clouds are made of. Spy sats generally want to see things that are not made of water.
        LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        Yawn. https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/water-you-water-and-human-body https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/sci...
        LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        Depends? Humans are made out of water (mostly) ;->
        icefox11 5y ago
        Its not only in space, but very far away from the Earth and the Moon, so it doesn't become saturated with IR. That apart, there is a lot of important IR a spy satellite would search for. The heat signature from a fighter jet is much larger that its visual signature, for example.
  - gruez 5y ago
    What evil things can you do with 4K HDR images of crops that you couldn't do with what's on google maps satelite view?
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      Determine whether that crop field is firm enough to support a tank driving over it. Or whether a helicopter can land on it without getting stuck. Or whether the crop is dry enough to catch fire. Or is the crop high enough to mask troop movements. And that is just the field. The nearby hedgerows, roads and other infrastructure is a big deal too.
      - loonster 5y ago
        The hedgerows of France! The allied forces greatly underestimated how difficult it will be to travel through them during WWII.
        sandworm101 5y ago
        Because of American planners. The age of the oldest hedge in the US is measured in decades. Hedges in France are aged in centuries. American tanks thought they were driving though some bushes. They ran into oak trees.
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago
        Are you sure about this, or just speculating?
    - bigiain 5y ago
      You can get way higher zoom/detail from cheap drones compare to GoogleMaps: https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Drone-view-mobi-map.jpg https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/D... You can use stereoscopy from overlapping drone images to get depth maps: https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Team_Photo_5._V2.jpg https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/T... I have no doubt major world powers have satellites that can match and exceed those sorts of capabilities from space, instead of from 100m up, but if you can get end users to pay for it themselves, why the hell wouldn’t you take it. (Note, that was a DJI drone, and I would have no real surprise if the Chinese couldn’t have taken all my imagery if they’d wanted to. I _might_ have noticed them exfiltrating a few 10s of GB of data somehow, but I might not have as well… They are already geo fencing every single flight it makes, to trigger a warning and ensure I can’t fly over airports (or out the front of my house, since I’m only a few km out one on the flight path from my local airport). I’d hardly be surprised if the drone triggered some other action if someone chose to fly one near/over a nuclear reactor or a military base…
  - SEJeff 5y ago
    Definitely not the case for US DoD / NRO satellites.
  - philipswood 5y ago
    Also: Drones fly under the clouds. And: If you've subverted the drone imaging you can use it to hide stuff. If you've subverted drone control you could use it as an active agent in conflict.
lazyeye 5y ago
No they'll probably only backdoor drones to get footage of stuff that interests them (wherever that may be).
- buran77 5y ago
  That's the only sane approach to start with. Even the NSA, in a country which undoubtedly leads in its technical ability to collect and store vast amounts of data, didn't try to intercept every Cisco router on the planet to backdoor it. That increases the amount of data you have to process and store by orders of magnitude, and vastly increases the risk of detection. Targeted strikes are way more effective until you have the capacity to effortlessly cast the widest net. I have no idea if China is there yet. So it wouldn't be a stretch to believe that some innocent looking bugs are introduced here and there, with the ability to string them into a serious exploit. It creates a cover of plausible deniability making it impossible (with what we know) to say it was incompetence or maliciousness as proven by any number of vulnerabilities which stayed for years in all kinds of software before being disclosed. Mass media works differently when reporting on the home-team vs. the enemy so you might get the idea that we know it's maliciousness when it's a Chinese drone manufacturer [0]. But it's just an accident when Webex is suddenly hit by a whole host of random bugs that allowed hackers to snoop on any meeting and needed multiple rounds of patches to be fixed, right in the middle of the teleworking setup [1]. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/chinese-made-drone-app-in-google-play-spooks-security-researchers/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/chine... [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/cisco-rolls-out-fix-for-webex-flaws-that-lets-hackers-eavesdrop-on-meetings/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/cisco...
  - lazyeye 5y ago
    Of course but in China you'll never see the (almost mandatory) "we're just as bad, if not worse" comment whenever an issue of national security comes up. I also note that China blocks all foreign social media from their markets whilst running some of the most invasive apps (e.g TikTok) in ours. Please enjoy your freedom to advocate on behalf of a foreign govt on a US based forum, a freedom not available to the good citizens of China.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Also, you wouldn't risk using that ability where it isn't needed as there's always a risk of discovery ruining the whole operation.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  If you use it indiscriminately everywhere then no one will know where you need it and everyone will become inured to such behaviour.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    That only works if people are forced to use the product. Obviously if their spying is proven, nobody will use it :)
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      > Obviously if their spying is proven, nobody will use it This is demonstrably false. There are already installations of surveillance camera with known backdoors but they remain installed. See, for instance, https://www.mnemonic.no/blog/exposing-backdoor-consumer-products/ https://www.mnemonic.no/blog/exposing-backdoor-consumer-prod..., https://xplora.no/ https://xplora.no/
ngcc_hk 5y ago
May not. But the key to Facebook, … mainland is data. Tik tok is not going to …
hutzlibu 5y ago
" The chinese are not going to backdoor a drone to get footage of some kid's pot plants behind a barn in Iowa." Thinking very long term: What if this kid is about to become someone important - you never know. But if he does, it could be convenient to have lots of private footage and possible blackmail material. Meaning, there is unlikely to be anyone watching the videos of kids flying drones now. But there might be the option that they automatically back it up to some server. Or that there is this option, that gets activated in some cases of interest to them.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
marcosdumay 5y ago
I do expect them to backdoor every drone, and only activate the ones they care about. That means your drone could start sending images at any time, but it probably doesn't and never will. That said, this is the exact same situation of not intentionally backdoored IoT.

leemailll 5y ago

oh yeah, sounds like china can't afford a spy satellite

sandworm101 5y ago
Satellite images are to drone footage what Poleroid is to 4k hdr. Both are images but that is where all practical similarity ends.
- slimsag 5y ago
  I wonder how long this will be true. Right now I think the US has 10cm/pixel resolution, but I imagine it's not long before that is far better? It might already be, we just wouldn't know about it
  - loonster 5y ago
    We got the Hubble after they made spy satellites about the same size. Maybe there is the equivalent of the JWST looking down at us?
    - mhh__ 5y ago
      JWST is fairly old tech now so probably better - by better I mean in some colloquial sense based on the passage of time, i.e. JWST would be pretty useless pointed at the earth one imagines.
      - loonster 5y ago
        Pointed at earth from k2 it would be useless. But a similar diameter in the same orbit as current spy satelites may be able to resolve objects 1/3 of the size. If OP is correct about 10cm, that would place it at around 3.7cm. It still is incredibly poor compared to what a high flying aircraft could capture, much less a drone spraying chemicals.
        sandworm101 5y ago
        There are other considerations. The atmosphere is wobbly. You can have a mirror 100f across. That won't help the distortion. The only option is active optics, mirrors that adjust in real time, something very hard to on the ground let alone in space.
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      JWST would be totally useless as a spy satellite. It sees in IR. It is in space specifically because IR does not penetrate the atmosphere very well. That applies when looking down equally as up. Everything from the mirror and sensors to the entire cooling operation is optimized to see that IR blocked by earths atmosphere. So any spysat version wanting to actually see through that atmosphere would share almost nothing in terms of design or parts. This is what real spysats looks like. They make JWST look like a toy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite) "is according to NRO director Bruce Carlson "(...) the largest satellite in the world".[3] It is believed that this refers to the diameter of the main antenna, which might be well in excess of 100 m (330 ft)."
      - jrockway 5y ago
        IR is how satellites see clouds at night. Seems to work pretty well.
        sandworm101 5y ago
        Weather-related sats see the clouds because IR is blocked by moisture, the stuff that clouds are made of. Spy sats generally want to see things that are not made of water.
        LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        Yawn. https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/water-you-water-and-human-body https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/sci...
        LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        Depends? Humans are made out of water (mostly) ;->
      - icefox11 5y ago
        Its not only in space, but very far away from the Earth and the Moon, so it doesn't become saturated with IR. That apart, there is a lot of important IR a spy satellite would search for. The heat signature from a fighter jet is much larger that its visual signature, for example.
- gruez 5y ago
  What evil things can you do with 4K HDR images of crops that you couldn't do with what's on google maps satelite view?
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    Determine whether that crop field is firm enough to support a tank driving over it. Or whether a helicopter can land on it without getting stuck. Or whether the crop is dry enough to catch fire. Or is the crop high enough to mask troop movements. And that is just the field. The nearby hedgerows, roads and other infrastructure is a big deal too.
    - loonster 5y ago
      The hedgerows of France! The allied forces greatly underestimated how difficult it will be to travel through them during WWII.
      - sandworm101 5y ago
        Because of American planners. The age of the oldest hedge in the US is measured in decades. Hedges in France are aged in centuries. American tanks thought they were driving though some bushes. They ran into oak trees.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      Are you sure about this, or just speculating?
  - bigiain 5y ago
    You can get way higher zoom/detail from cheap drones compare to GoogleMaps: https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Drone-view-mobi-map.jpg https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/D... You can use stereoscopy from overlapping drone images to get depth maps: https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Team_Photo_5._V2.jpg https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/T... I have no doubt major world powers have satellites that can match and exceed those sorts of capabilities from space, instead of from 100m up, but if you can get end users to pay for it themselves, why the hell wouldn’t you take it. (Note, that was a DJI drone, and I would have no real surprise if the Chinese couldn’t have taken all my imagery if they’d wanted to. I _might_ have noticed them exfiltrating a few 10s of GB of data somehow, but I might not have as well… They are already geo fencing every single flight it makes, to trigger a warning and ensure I can’t fly over airports (or out the front of my house, since I’m only a few km out one on the flight path from my local airport). I’d hardly be surprised if the drone triggered some other action if someone chose to fly one near/over a nuclear reactor or a military base…
- SEJeff 5y ago
  Definitely not the case for US DoD / NRO satellites.
- philipswood 5y ago
  Also: Drones fly under the clouds. And: If you've subverted the drone imaging you can use it to hide stuff. If you've subverted drone control you could use it as an active agent in conflict.

lazyeye 5y ago

No they'll probably only backdoor drones to get footage of stuff that interests them (wherever that may be).

buran77 5y ago
That's the only sane approach to start with. Even the NSA, in a country which undoubtedly leads in its technical ability to collect and store vast amounts of data, didn't try to intercept every Cisco router on the planet to backdoor it. That increases the amount of data you have to process and store by orders of magnitude, and vastly increases the risk of detection. Targeted strikes are way more effective until you have the capacity to effortlessly cast the widest net. I have no idea if China is there yet. So it wouldn't be a stretch to believe that some innocent looking bugs are introduced here and there, with the ability to string them into a serious exploit. It creates a cover of plausible deniability making it impossible (with what we know) to say it was incompetence or maliciousness as proven by any number of vulnerabilities which stayed for years in all kinds of software before being disclosed. Mass media works differently when reporting on the home-team vs. the enemy so you might get the idea that we know it's maliciousness when it's a Chinese drone manufacturer [0]. But it's just an accident when Webex is suddenly hit by a whole host of random bugs that allowed hackers to snoop on any meeting and needed multiple rounds of patches to be fixed, right in the middle of the teleworking setup [1]. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/chinese-made-drone-app-in-google-play-spooks-security-researchers/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/chine... [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/cisco-rolls-out-fix-for-webex-flaws-that-lets-hackers-eavesdrop-on-meetings/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/cisco...
- lazyeye 5y ago
  Of course but in China you'll never see the (almost mandatory) "we're just as bad, if not worse" comment whenever an issue of national security comes up. I also note that China blocks all foreign social media from their markets whilst running some of the most invasive apps (e.g TikTok) in ours. Please enjoy your freedom to advocate on behalf of a foreign govt on a US based forum, a freedom not available to the good citizens of China.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Also, you wouldn't risk using that ability where it isn't needed as there's always a risk of discovery ruining the whole operation.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
If you use it indiscriminately everywhere then no one will know where you need it and everyone will become inured to such behaviour.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  That only works if people are forced to use the product. Obviously if their spying is proven, nobody will use it :)
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > Obviously if their spying is proven, nobody will use it This is demonstrably false. There are already installations of surveillance camera with known backdoors but they remain installed. See, for instance, https://www.mnemonic.no/blog/exposing-backdoor-consumer-products/ https://www.mnemonic.no/blog/exposing-backdoor-consumer-prod..., https://xplora.no/ https://xplora.no/

ngcc_hk 5y ago

May not. But the key to Facebook, … mainland is data. Tik tok is not going to …

hutzlibu 5y ago

" The chinese are not going to backdoor a drone to get footage of some kid's pot plants behind a barn in Iowa." Thinking very long term: What if this kid is about to become someone important - you never know. But if he does, it could be convenient to have lots of private footage and possible blackmail material. Meaning, there is unlikely to be anyone watching the videos of kids flying drones now. But there might be the option that they automatically back it up to some server. Or that there is this option, that gets activated in some cases of interest to them.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

marcosdumay 5y ago

I do expect them to backdoor every drone, and only activate the ones they care about. That means your drone could start sending images at any time, but it probably doesn't and never will. That said, this is the exact same situation of not intentionally backdoored IoT.