5 ms·

"2. Based on commentary from native Persian speakers on this thread, it would appear that no one is claiming that the drone was remotely piloted by Iranians int

by s_q_b 13y ago

"2. Based on commentary from native Persian speakers on this thread, it would appear that no one is claiming that the drone was remotely piloted by Iranians into US Airspace, but rather the one that was shot down in Iran several months ago (confirmed by the US Government) had these photos on it." If this is true it means the Iranians compromised the encryption on the UAV's drive, which would be seriously not good.

javert 13y ago
The Iranians outsmarting NSA encryption? Not likely. Possible in theory and a huge deal, but not likely. If they decrpyted something from a military aircraft, it's much more likely that shoddy engineering work was done on that aspect of said aircraft because it was decided that security wasn't a top concern. (And, indeed, having pictures of JFK _isn't_ a big deal.)
- s_q_b 13y ago
  Totally possible the imaging equipment retains data in an insecure fashion. However, milspec != NSA, and its highly likely the Russians would help the Iranians in such an endeavor in exchange for intelligence sharing.
  - javert 13y ago
    > milspec != NSA What exactly is "milspec"? I was under the impression that military security standards in the US _are_ produced by the NSA. > highly likely the Russians would help the Iranians in such an endeavor in exchange for intelligence sharing. I must be missing something... yes, but what do Russians have to do with it? I thought this was a US drone captured by Iranians. Genuine question here.
    - s_q_b 13y ago
      MIL-SPEC means encryption built to military specifications. It includes, but does not equate to, NSA Suite B cryptography. As you can imagine, using crypto designed by a paranoid spook agency would not be appropriate for all military applications, for example a near-real-time flight application. As a result, there are a variety of encryption standards used by the military, some of which would be approved by the NSA, others which wouldn't. It's a good question about the Russians. The ties between Russia and Iran are much tighter than most in the US realize, especially when it comes to national security, and particularly with regard to US-related issues. If we used industrial grade crypto on a system, it would be in line with past behaviors for the Russians to help the Iranians with it.
      - javert 13y ago
        Thanks. Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>. > for example a near-real-time flight application. Wait, why do you say such a system wouldn't use NSA-grade encryption?
        s_q_b 13y ago
        > for example a near-real-time flight application. Primarily latency. Now, ideally you'd like the entire subsystem moved off disk into volatile memory, but for some things you're going to have to read from disk. I can imagine cases where that wouldn't be easily feasible if the drive had NSA crypto. "Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>." Right, but its more than that in the case of the Iranians. The Russians have a long and documented history of assistance to the Iranians and the Syrians.
        javert 13y ago
        > for some things you're going to have to read from disk. I'm not sure I follow. For some things you're going to have to _write_ to disk... like captured video. (I wouldn't consider that to be the "real-time" part of the software, though.) And you might have to read from disk occasionally... maybe you have map information stored there... but that probably doesn't need to be real-time. Can you tell me an example where you would need to read from disk in real-time? (Which I think should anyway be impossible, regardless of whether or not heavy crypto is being used.) > The Russians have a long and documented history of assistance to the Iranians and the Syrians. Yeah, very true, I have noticed that, too.
        s_q_b 13y ago
        Sure! Man I love when people on hn ask genuine questions rather than trying to one up one another. It's one of the reasons I was so reluctant to stop lurking for so long. Much like the Mars rovers, the navigation system is loaded in a modular fashion, with complex algorithms for each scenario loaded on the fly. So for example, imagine a UAV goes into a stall. Likely the aircraft needs a whole new set of algorithms to recover. It's very likely I this case you'd need low latency disk reads. Now again, this is just a guess based upon my experience with similar systems. I've never developed a UAV system.

by s_q_b 13y ago

javert 13y ago

The Iranians outsmarting NSA encryption? Not likely. Possible in theory and a huge deal, but not likely. If they decrpyted something from a military aircraft, it's much more likely that shoddy engineering work was done on that aspect of said aircraft because it was decided that security wasn't a top concern. (And, indeed, having pictures of JFK _isn't_ a big deal.)

s_q_b 13y ago
Totally possible the imaging equipment retains data in an insecure fashion. However, milspec != NSA, and its highly likely the Russians would help the Iranians in such an endeavor in exchange for intelligence sharing.
- javert 13y ago
  > milspec != NSA What exactly is "milspec"? I was under the impression that military security standards in the US _are_ produced by the NSA. > highly likely the Russians would help the Iranians in such an endeavor in exchange for intelligence sharing. I must be missing something... yes, but what do Russians have to do with it? I thought this was a US drone captured by Iranians. Genuine question here.
  - s_q_b 13y ago
    MIL-SPEC means encryption built to military specifications. It includes, but does not equate to, NSA Suite B cryptography. As you can imagine, using crypto designed by a paranoid spook agency would not be appropriate for all military applications, for example a near-real-time flight application. As a result, there are a variety of encryption standards used by the military, some of which would be approved by the NSA, others which wouldn't. It's a good question about the Russians. The ties between Russia and Iran are much tighter than most in the US realize, especially when it comes to national security, and particularly with regard to US-related issues. If we used industrial grade crypto on a system, it would be in line with past behaviors for the Russians to help the Iranians with it.
    - javert 13y ago
      Thanks. Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>. > for example a near-real-time flight application. Wait, why do you say such a system wouldn't use NSA-grade encryption?
      - s_q_b 13y ago
        > for example a near-real-time flight application. Primarily latency. Now, ideally you'd like the entire subsystem moved off disk into volatile memory, but for some things you're going to have to read from disk. I can imagine cases where that wouldn't be easily feasible if the drive had NSA crypto. "Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>." Right, but its more than that in the case of the Iranians. The Russians have a long and documented history of assistance to the Iranians and the Syrians.
        javert 13y ago
        > for some things you're going to have to read from disk. I'm not sure I follow. For some things you're going to have to _write_ to disk... like captured video. (I wouldn't consider that to be the "real-time" part of the software, though.) And you might have to read from disk occasionally... maybe you have map information stored there... but that probably doesn't need to be real-time. Can you tell me an example where you would need to read from disk in real-time? (Which I think should anyway be impossible, regardless of whether or not heavy crypto is being used.) > The Russians have a long and documented history of assistance to the Iranians and the Syrians. Yeah, very true, I have noticed that, too.
        s_q_b 13y ago
        Sure! Man I love when people on hn ask genuine questions rather than trying to one up one another. It's one of the reasons I was so reluctant to stop lurking for so long. Much like the Mars rovers, the navigation system is loaded in a modular fashion, with complex algorithms for each scenario loaded on the fly. So for example, imagine a UAV goes into a stall. Likely the aircraft needs a whole new set of algorithms to recover. It's very likely I this case you'd need low latency disk reads. Now again, this is just a guess based upon my experience with similar systems. I've never developed a UAV system.