Question about UAVs/UCAVs

with the increasing prevelance and relliance on UAVs/UCAVs and their projected increase in use in future conflicts, is it possible that somewhere out there there is a way to hack them and convert them into enemy aircraft (and dont say that they have inpregnable encryption cause all encryption can be broken or stollen)

[edit on 29-4-2005 by jo1327n]

Originally posted by jo1327n
with the increasing prevelance and relliance on UAVs/UCAVs and their projected increase in use in future conflicts, is it possible that somewhere out there there is a way to hack them and convert them into enemy aircraft (and dont say that they have inpregnable encryption cause all encryption can be broken or stollen

)

[edit on 29-4-2005 by jo1327n]

Yes, its entirely possible. Except that the quote 'all encryption can be broken or stolen' is misleading.

No encryption is unbreakable (that we know of). That much is true.

However, even for simple small encryption routines like say 64bit, it still takes years to try all the keyspace. If you use a different key for each transmission, the enemy has to start from scratch to discover the key each time, increasing vastly the chance that by the time the key is broken, its useless.

Military strength keys usually run at 2048bit or higher. To put this into perspective -

64bit key runs at 18446744073709551616 possible keys in the keyspace (2^64).

128bit key runs at 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 different possible keys in the keyspace (2^128).

2048bit key runs at 323170060713110073007148766886699519604441026697154840321303454275246\
551388678908931972014115229134636887179609218980194941195591504909210\
950881523864482831206308773673009960917501977503896521067960576383840\
675682767922186426197561618380943384761704705816458520363050428875758\
915410658086075523991239303855219143333896683424206849747865645694948\
561760353263220580778056593310261927084603141502585928641771167259436\
037184618573575983511523016459044036976132332872312271256847108202097\
251571017269313234696785425806566979350459972683529986382155251663894\
37335543602135433229604645318478604952148193555853611059596230656 possible keys in the keyspace (2^2048).

There is no supercomputer yet created that can crack a 2048bit key in a persons lifetime, or indeed several peoples lifetimes. To break a key you need to check at least 50% of the keyspace, individually and check the outcome for a correct decrypt. Very rarely does a cypher get 'broken' by way of a shortcut found, 99% of cyphers broken are done via brute force. And you can always use a 4096bit key.

To continue on, you can protect from stolen encryption keys by ... using random ones! Its possible to exchange random keys between hosts over an insecure medium in a secure manner - IE I can let you know through this board in a public post what my key is so that you can send me a secure message, and noone else on this board could. Take a look at hte Diffie Helman key exchange protocol.