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How will the show help? Army and navy recruitment has been outsourced to a private company. They are not good at recruiting, either intentionally or simply inco

How will the show help? Army and navy recruitment has been outsourced to a private company. They are not good at recruiting, either intentionally or simply incompetent.

seabass-labrax 3y ago
It could inspire people to apply of their own accord rather than being approached by the armed forces recruitment (I didn't know it had been outsourced; that is interesting). It's a very plausible situation - a military demonstration locally was very enjoyable for me, and I would absolutely go again. If they were trying to recruit me, though, they shot their bolt by admitting in response to my queries that their encrypted radios utilised, shall we say, less than ideal cyphers :)
- some_random 3y ago
  Maybe they were hoping you'd join in order to fix them /s
  - seabass-labrax 3y ago
    Unfortunately, there was apparently no such eagerness to improve the equipment. The officer who demonstrated the gadget to me did not seem at all concerned that his platoon had to have physical access to a radio in order to revoke its encryption key! One might like to think that the foe will be an officer and a gentleman, yet somehow I don't think they are going to publish those revocation certificates on the British Army's behalf should they manage to obtain one of our radios...!
    - some_random 3y ago
      Wait how else would it be done? If you lose control of a radio you don't revoke the key you rotate it on all the radios you still control. The only reason you'd ever revoke a key is for administrative reasons (like you're handing the units off to someone else or something) in which case you'll have physical access just fine.
      - seabass-labrax 3y ago
        To be specific (as best I can; this conversation was about five years ago now), the radios used a form of symmetric encryption. The company would have squads of under ten soldiers, working covertly behind enemy lines in sabotage and reconnaissance. I don't remember whether the radios could communicate with each other only within the squads or across their entire platoon, but the thing that stood out to me was this: should a single soldier be captured (they'd be in enemy territory after all), each other soldier would have to meet together in person to reset the encryption keys. It's hard to believe, but if I understood the chap at the military exhibition correctly, the enemy could use a captured device to listen in to every communication among the squad/platoon, which would presumably make it perilous for them to reconvene again in secret - precisely what they would need to do in order to cycle the keys. If a more PKI-style mode of encryption was used instead, there could be a 'dead-man switch' or emergency button on the radio that would send a revocation certificate to all the other soldiers' radios if one was captured, causing the platoon to immediately cease encrypting their signals for the compromised set.
        dmurray 3y ago
        Seems like a really hard problem though. A dead-man switch is likely to get triggered unintentionally if you're literally in a firefight. You could improve a bit with some kind of consensus protocol - "we all agree these six radios have not been compromised" - but coordinating that in practice seems hard, and vulnerable to an enemy capturing a single radio and initiating the consensus protocol.
        some_random 3y ago
        In a tactical context, it's a huge ask to get intel value out of a radio in a timeframe that'll be useful. On top of that, compromised comms are almost certainly better than no comms. Military radio comms are pretty good (at least in the US), what I though OP was probably referring to was P25 which is a civilian protocol with several issues [1][2] [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re9nG81Vft8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re9nG81Vft8 [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2se6th_6eYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2se6th_6eYc (I was there for Matt's 2019 talk, haven't actually watched the 2024 one)
    - dambi0 3y ago
      Perhaps you and the officer had different perspectives on the threat models under which revocation of radio encryption keys might happen? Maybe there are additional controls in place?
martynr 3y ago
Could it rather be that genZ are risk averse and choose not to volunteer to be shot at? Or even that they have greater moral concerns than earlier generations? (No judgement on that implied, complexities acknowledged) That said, personally can’t see how a show would be much help either.

How will the show help? Army and navy recruitment has been outsourced to a private company. They are not good at recruiting, either intentionally or simply incompetent.

seabass-labrax 3y ago

It could inspire people to apply of their own accord rather than being approached by the armed forces recruitment (I didn't know it had been outsourced; that is interesting). It's a very plausible situation - a military demonstration locally was very enjoyable for me, and I would absolutely go again. If they were trying to recruit me, though, they shot their bolt by admitting in response to my queries that their encrypted radios utilised, shall we say, less than ideal cyphers :)

some_random 3y ago
Maybe they were hoping you'd join in order to fix them /s
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  Unfortunately, there was apparently no such eagerness to improve the equipment. The officer who demonstrated the gadget to me did not seem at all concerned that his platoon had to have physical access to a radio in order to revoke its encryption key! One might like to think that the foe will be an officer and a gentleman, yet somehow I don't think they are going to publish those revocation certificates on the British Army's behalf should they manage to obtain one of our radios...!
  - some_random 3y ago
    Wait how else would it be done? If you lose control of a radio you don't revoke the key you rotate it on all the radios you still control. The only reason you'd ever revoke a key is for administrative reasons (like you're handing the units off to someone else or something) in which case you'll have physical access just fine.
    - seabass-labrax 3y ago
      To be specific (as best I can; this conversation was about five years ago now), the radios used a form of symmetric encryption. The company would have squads of under ten soldiers, working covertly behind enemy lines in sabotage and reconnaissance. I don't remember whether the radios could communicate with each other only within the squads or across their entire platoon, but the thing that stood out to me was this: should a single soldier be captured (they'd be in enemy territory after all), each other soldier would have to meet together in person to reset the encryption keys. It's hard to believe, but if I understood the chap at the military exhibition correctly, the enemy could use a captured device to listen in to every communication among the squad/platoon, which would presumably make it perilous for them to reconvene again in secret - precisely what they would need to do in order to cycle the keys. If a more PKI-style mode of encryption was used instead, there could be a 'dead-man switch' or emergency button on the radio that would send a revocation certificate to all the other soldiers' radios if one was captured, causing the platoon to immediately cease encrypting their signals for the compromised set.
      - dmurray 3y ago
        Seems like a really hard problem though. A dead-man switch is likely to get triggered unintentionally if you're literally in a firefight. You could improve a bit with some kind of consensus protocol - "we all agree these six radios have not been compromised" - but coordinating that in practice seems hard, and vulnerable to an enemy capturing a single radio and initiating the consensus protocol.
        some_random 3y ago
        In a tactical context, it's a huge ask to get intel value out of a radio in a timeframe that'll be useful. On top of that, compromised comms are almost certainly better than no comms. Military radio comms are pretty good (at least in the US), what I though OP was probably referring to was P25 which is a civilian protocol with several issues [1][2] [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re9nG81Vft8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re9nG81Vft8 [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2se6th_6eYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2se6th_6eYc (I was there for Matt's 2019 talk, haven't actually watched the 2024 one)
  - dambi0 3y ago
    Perhaps you and the officer had different perspectives on the threat models under which revocation of radio encryption keys might happen? Maybe there are additional controls in place?

martynr 3y ago

Could it rather be that genZ are risk averse and choose not to volunteer to be shot at? Or even that they have greater moral concerns than earlier generations? (No judgement on that implied, complexities acknowledged) That said, personally can’t see how a show would be much help either.