4 ms·

A clever strategy that few thought of; it deserved to win. On the downside, this is surely going to give me nightmares about government drones getting infected

by cs702 14y ago

A clever strategy that few thought of; it deserved to win. On the downside, this is surely going to give me nightmares about government drones getting infected with a terrorist virus and unleashing drone-botnet-mageddon on the masses.

aaronblohowiak 14y ago
If you want a taste of that today, there are places you could move (Yemen, Pakistan..)
sliverstorm 14y ago
How quaint, a terrorist virus? No, it'll probably just be normal government drones with normal government software that unleashes drone-ageddon on the masses. Whether it's a robot uprising, or a bug/oversight in the software, or Big Brother, is up to your own personal taste in dystopian horrors.
- r00fus 14y ago
  The terrorist virus is simply plausible deniability so the government can continue it's progression towards new world order. I mean, who really thought Bin Laden had that much power or legitimacy?
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    Bin laden had legitimacy? I'd say that he did until he started organising the killing of people.
    - arethuza 14y ago
      I don't remember anyone in the West complaining when he was organising the killing of Soviet soldiers.
      - ajuc 14y ago
        Maybe it's because these soldiers were on Afghani terrain without Afghan people permission?
        arethuza 14y ago
        Oh - I wasn't trying to defend him - he was a monster. But, like Saddam Hussein, the West regarded him for long periods as a useful monster.
cobrausn 14y ago
I agree with the first point. It did deserve to win. In regards to the second point, I think you've been playing too much Black Ops 2.
- pmorici 14y ago
  It's not totally w/o precedent... http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/insurgents-intercept-drone-video-in-king-sized-security-breach/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/insurgents-intercept... http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/hack-proof-drone/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/hack-proof-drone/
walru 14y ago
..and now everyone with an account on Hacker News is a potential terror suspect.
- JakeSc 14y ago
  You're afraid of typing the wrong things too? And also when the pixels on your monitor make certain patterns?
bigiain 14y ago
Since it seems the biggest users of viruses, and presumably the most talented virus writers, are those doing ddos attacks against other websites… Who wants to guess at when the first p0wned Reaper or Predator takes out a datacenter housing servers for someone who's annoyed Anonymous, or perhaps a competing poker/porn/pills site? (That'll make a change from the usual "Cascading failures in us-1-east" post-mortem blog posts…)
jackpirate 14y ago
Sort of like what Iran did? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
penguin_gab 14y ago
The source code for the script for infected drones is at Github, it should be easy to identify a hacked drone - function () { up(Math.random() * 2 - 1) }, function () { left(Math.random() * 2 - 1) }, function () { turn(Math.random() * 2 - 1) }, A scary thought would be U.S military drones ever getting infected by terrorists, and the source code goes - function firePredatorMissile(coordinates) { ... } firePredatorMissile(computedLargestCivilianCluster.coordinates) And if you combine this with the fact that it can hack nearby drones and control them as well..
mc32 14y ago
Although this wasn't a proper war game, it tangentially reminds me of Colonel Van Riper's pesky 'enemies' defeating the hometeam via peskiness and outsmarting the technological advantage of the home team. In one scenario, the Van Riper's team 'sunk' a flotilla but the warroomers 'refloated' them, just because.[1] "For instance—and here is where he displayed prescience—Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to Red troops, thereby eluding Blue's super-sophisticated eavesdropping technology. He maneuvered Red forces constantly. At one point in the game, when Blue's fleet entered the Persian Gulf, he sank some of the ships with suicide-bombers in speed boats. (At that point, the managers stopped the game, "refloated" the Blue fleet, and resumed play.)" [1]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2003/03/wargamed.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...
- nnq 14y ago
  even in the game with Van Riper, you could assume that your intelligence agencies did the right thing at preventing his unorthodox tactics and that's why some of his actions were never carried out. after all, if your army is (obviously) better equipped for fighting a conventional war, as opposed to the enemy, then is the job of your intelligence services to push the war towards a more traditional style war that you can win, so if the controllers assumed such a scenario their actions in such a game could be somewhat justifiable (again, assuming the red didn't have the resources of an intelligence agency backed by a wealthy nation). now if you were to treat the AR drones competition as some sort of war game, you would have to assume such hacking capabilities on both sides, probably balancing out or interacting in interesting ways...
  - mc32 14y ago
    The enemy engages in sabotage and guerilla warfare because they know they have no chance at winning a conventional war --but the wargamers dismissed the weaknesses in some of their assumptions (such that technological superiority equates to prevalence on all fronts of the battlefield. Van Riper showed them they had weaknesses but they preferred to sidestep them --this thought process probably explains our initial susceptibility to IEDs and other unorthodox tactics by our foes.

by cs702 14y ago

aaronblohowiak 14y ago

If you want a taste of that today, there are places you could move (Yemen, Pakistan..)

sliverstorm 14y ago

How quaint, a terrorist virus? No, it'll probably just be normal government drones with normal government software that unleashes drone-ageddon on the masses. Whether it's a robot uprising, or a bug/oversight in the software, or Big Brother, is up to your own personal taste in dystopian horrors.

r00fus 14y ago
The terrorist virus is simply plausible deniability so the government can continue it's progression towards new world order. I mean, who really thought Bin Laden had that much power or legitimacy?
- lostlogin 14y ago
  Bin laden had legitimacy? I'd say that he did until he started organising the killing of people.
  - arethuza 14y ago
    I don't remember anyone in the West complaining when he was organising the killing of Soviet soldiers.
    - ajuc 14y ago
      Maybe it's because these soldiers were on Afghani terrain without Afghan people permission?
      - arethuza 14y ago
        Oh - I wasn't trying to defend him - he was a monster. But, like Saddam Hussein, the West regarded him for long periods as a useful monster.

cobrausn 14y ago

I agree with the first point. It did deserve to win. In regards to the second point, I think you've been playing too much Black Ops 2.

pmorici 14y ago
It's not totally w/o precedent... http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/insurgents-intercept-drone-video-in-king-sized-security-breach/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/insurgents-intercept... http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/hack-proof-drone/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/hack-proof-drone/

walru 14y ago

..and now everyone with an account on Hacker News is a potential terror suspect.

JakeSc 14y ago
You're afraid of typing the wrong things too? And also when the pixels on your monitor make certain patterns?

bigiain 14y ago

Since it seems the biggest users of viruses, and presumably the most talented virus writers, are those doing ddos attacks against other websites… Who wants to guess at when the first p0wned Reaper or Predator takes out a datacenter housing servers for someone who's annoyed Anonymous, or perhaps a competing poker/porn/pills site? (That'll make a change from the usual "Cascading failures in us-1-east" post-mortem blog posts…)

jackpirate 14y ago

Sort of like what Iran did? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

penguin_gab 14y ago

The source code for the script for infected drones is at Github, it should be easy to identify a hacked drone - function () { up(Math.random() * 2 - 1) }, function () { left(Math.random() * 2 - 1) }, function () { turn(Math.random() * 2 - 1) }, A scary thought would be U.S military drones ever getting infected by terrorists, and the source code goes - function firePredatorMissile(coordinates) { ... } firePredatorMissile(computedLargestCivilianCluster.coordinates) And if you combine this with the fact that it can hack nearby drones and control them as well..

mc32 14y ago

Although this wasn't a proper war game, it tangentially reminds me of Colonel Van Riper's pesky 'enemies' defeating the hometeam via peskiness and outsmarting the technological advantage of the home team. In one scenario, the Van Riper's team 'sunk' a flotilla but the warroomers 'refloated' them, just because.[1] "For instance—and here is where he displayed prescience—Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to Red troops, thereby eluding Blue's super-sophisticated eavesdropping technology. He maneuvered Red forces constantly. At one point in the game, when Blue's fleet entered the Persian Gulf, he sank some of the ships with suicide-bombers in speed boats. (At that point, the managers stopped the game, "refloated" the Blue fleet, and resumed play.)" [1]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2003/03/wargamed.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...

nnq 14y ago
even in the game with Van Riper, you could assume that your intelligence agencies did the right thing at preventing his unorthodox tactics and that's why some of his actions were never carried out. after all, if your army is (obviously) better equipped for fighting a conventional war, as opposed to the enemy, then is the job of your intelligence services to push the war towards a more traditional style war that you can win, so if the controllers assumed such a scenario their actions in such a game could be somewhat justifiable (again, assuming the red didn't have the resources of an intelligence agency backed by a wealthy nation). now if you were to treat the AR drones competition as some sort of war game, you would have to assume such hacking capabilities on both sides, probably balancing out or interacting in interesting ways...
- mc32 14y ago
  The enemy engages in sabotage and guerilla warfare because they know they have no chance at winning a conventional war --but the wargamers dismissed the weaknesses in some of their assumptions (such that technological superiority equates to prevalence on all fronts of the battlefield. Van Riper showed them they had weaknesses but they preferred to sidestep them --this thought process probably explains our initial susceptibility to IEDs and other unorthodox tactics by our foes.