Iran hacks U.S. drone- to begin reverse engineering project to build counter drone

Hello ATS,

I hope Everyone remembers Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran. Futher to this Local Television on Iran has broadcasted the Images of downed drone. It also said that Iran hacked the technology and begin building the Counter-drone.

Iranian state television broadcast images this morning of what they purport to be a downed U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel drone. The host on the program said the Iranians “hacked into the signal” and landed the drone, which explains why it looks to be in pristine condition. The television host added that Iran is beginning to reverse engineer the stealth drone. The Pentagon did not immediately have comment on the footage.

Pictures of Downed Drone

I mentioned in another thread about this that could there be a possibility that the US deliberately landed it themselves and allowed Iran to take the glory for capturing it? What reason could that be? Anyway regarding Iran saying they are reverse engineering the drone that's only a worry if they understand what they are looking at.

reply to post by markygee


I doubt it, its a huge victory for Iran to be able to parade the drone around on TV, I wouldn't underestimate Iran, they are world leaders in some fields, plastic surgery being one believe it or or not

Originally posted by markygee
I mentioned in another thread about this that could there be a possibility that the US deliberately landed it themselves and allowed Iran to take the glory for capturing it? What reason could that be? Anyway regarding Iran saying they are reverse engineering the drone that's only a worry if they understand what they are looking at.

So , it seems you know much about reverse engineering.

I don't say Iran will understand all about that drone. But they will do better analyzing with that drone in hand.

+ Iranian are good at copying things and they have shown it.

I for one, urge the Iranians to spare no expense at reverse engineering the drone. Expend all that is necessary to unlock the secrets of the American Made technology!

I always enjoy watching inferior nations take pride in the acquisition of technology they do not understand and are unable to replicate or support or advance.

It's like watching a cave man pick up a copy of the Principia Mathematica, wave it proudly as a trophy, and then toss it on the camp fire assured of its advanced warmth-generating abilities.

reply to post by markygee


I think this is indeed a good theory. The military also allows its enemies to get hold of certain technologies that they have so that they can go to the government and demand more money for new technology because the enemy have 'caught up' when in actual fact they have just been given or sold it. It's a good theory for getting much more money to spend on military technology. Make your enemies stronger so that you can justify strengthening yourself even more.

Originally posted by hmdphantom

Originally posted by markygee
I mentioned in another thread about this that could there be a possibility that the US deliberately landed it themselves and allowed Iran to take the glory for capturing it? What reason could that be? Anyway regarding Iran saying they are reverse engineering the drone that's only a worry if they understand what they are looking at.

So , it seems you know much about reverse engineering.

I don't say Iran will understand all about that drone. But they will do better analyzing with that drone in hand.

+ Iranian are good at copying things and they have shown it.

edit on 9/12/11 by hmdphantom because: (no reason given)

[/quote

No, I know nothing about reverse engineering but having a bit of sense means that if they don't understand the tech then there's no need to worry carry on just destroy it if you can't get it back. If they do then it screws up current plans that rely on drones.

Originally posted by clintdelicious
reply to post by markygee

 

I think this is indeed a good theory. The military also allows its enemies to get hold of certain technologies that they have so that they can go to the government and demand more money for new technology because the enemy have 'caught up' when in actual fact they have just been given or sold it. It's a good theory for getting much more money to spend on military technology. Make your enemies stronger so that you can justify strengthening yourself even more.

Now what could the US have to counter their own tech in the event that it is stolen or captured? Someone's going to say UFO tech soon I can sense it lol. Anyway if its deliberate then they already have a replacement lined up and ready in my opinion.

Originally posted by markygee
Now what could the US have to counter their own tech in the event that it is stolen or captured? Someone's going to say UFO tech soon I can sense it lol. Anyway if its deliberate then they already have a replacement lined up and ready in my opinion.

Do you think that maybe this thought already crossed the minds of the guys that designed this drone? That there may be a time when one would be captured?

Right now, there's a group of guys in an office somewhere complaining their weekend plans were shot to crap because of this, because now they have to start with any countermeasures they had for this happening.

Originally posted by markygee
I mentioned in another thread about this that could there be a possibility that the US deliberately landed it themselves and allowed Iran to take the glory for capturing it? What reason could that be? Anyway regarding Iran saying they are reverse engineering the drone that's only a worry if they understand what they are looking at.

A big reason. They can use this as a sign of aggression from Iran, not only this -- but an excuse for more military expeditions.

The logic isn't at all that hard to "create" for any of those scenarios.

If they are being flown on Radio Frequency, it would likely be encrypted, even still -- if you used the same frequency, it wouldn't have locked out the owners of the drone. It would of literally been a "Wtf is going on" moment with the pilot, who would of been fighting the forced landing entirely, most likely causing a crash rather than a safe landing.

Furthermore, wouldn't they be using 1,000+ bit encryption on stealth drone? Each encryption having a different passcode? It would take months to crack ONE (which would have to be specific) with the biggest brute force super farms, let alone be able to ever do it in the wild....

Completely farce. Couldn't happen unless they are out there flying unencrypted. Even still, it would of had to have been a tug of war scenario short of finding the pilots and using his controlled to land it.

As for reverse engineering the drone... Like anything software controller, in the hands of hackers it will be doing MORE than what it was doing before, once they start tinkering with it.

They will understand this 100%, and better than most people operating them.

It's like anything in the electronic field. Once you have it in front of you, it's easy to see how it works.

Yeah there's just something about Iran having a pristine stealth drone that doesn't sit right. You hacked it you say? I just dont believe you. Seems more like a trap imo. I feel that america meant to loose it, considering they (and the uk) are looking for a reason to invade.

reply to post by markygee


So , search if there has been another drone taken down in history to be even looked at closely?

reply to post by AncietSoul


If I was a smart superpower my drones would have spy equipment in hidden parts of drones or other equipment so when downed or captured and THE FIRST PLACE THEY TAKE IT IS INTO THEIR LABS THEN..... I just got inside intel from a hidden drone use agenda. Now if nanos where in play then you can activate parts of equipment and REALLY SPY AND PLACE TARGET DEVICES SMH. The games would this work on incomming craft downed on planets , hmmm MAYBE

Originally posted by mike_trivisonno
I for one, urge the Iranians to spare no expense at reverse engineering the drone. Expend all that is necessary to unlock the secrets of the American Made technology!

Judging by the state of the world, the Iranians will probably find a "made in China" sticker on the "American Made technology"!

Anyway, to topic.

On does wonder whether the drone is real and if so, whether the Iranians would have the domestic expertise to "reverse engineer" the drone. To successfully revere engineer you need to be able to understand, fabricate and replicate and that’s not easy.

It may be that the Iranians have recovered “bits” and what we are looking at is a model, fabricated in some government garage.

I am highly cynical of anything that comes out of the Iranian government.

Regards

Originally posted by Laokin
Furthermore, wouldn't they be using 1,000+ bit encryption on stealth drone? Each encryption having a different passcode? It would take months to crack ONE (which would have to be specific) with the biggest brute force super farms, let alone be able to ever do it in the wild....

Military encryption is usually symmetrical, because the military controls key distribution. Think AES with its 128-256 bit key size. There are no brute force super farms on this planet that can recover such a key in practical time. By "practical," I mean "the key is recovered before the sun becomes a red giant and swallows the Earth."

Originally posted by hmdphantom
reply to post by markygee

 

So , search if there has been another drone taken down in history to be even looked at closely?

not as far as I can see but what's your point? As you avatar says you are Iranian do you naturally lean towards your govt controlling it? I wouldn't rule it out but equally I can't rule out the idea that it was allowed to happen. I can't believe that on the Iranians first attempt they successfully steal control of a state of the art piece of stealth equipment from the people actually controlling it, a seamless take over resulting in a perfect landing of the aircraft? It's unbelievable, to me anyway. With no fail safe mechanisms taking over but instead overridden?
What's your honest opinion?
Looking at pics of it I was a little bit surprised its colour and appearance makes it look more like a prototype/test piece it just doesn't look right. But hey what do I know?

reply to post by Ophiuchus 13


What you say is also possible.. because america is smart enough to keep these thing in mind when they are spying on other countries. So they might have installed some device which can be activated remotely if something happens..so thats why now US has said nothing about it & maitaining silence i think..

reply to post by markygee


I don't know if they hacked it or not , but I think they have a worthy piece of science art now.

I don't have anymore information about it.

Ok guys, so here are a few facts about hacking an unknown technology. When you are trying to hack into known technology (systems or environment or language say like Windows, Linux, IIS, Apache, ASP.NET, PHP etc.) you know how to interact with them. And you know how they react to the input and then try to take advantage of the assumptions or mistakes the developers made when coding those. Probably you have a copy of those to fiddle with and figure out the vulnerabilities, test the exploit a thousand times to make it work flawlessly and then try go out and hack the real thing.

Hacking a stealth drone plane which gets undetected by radar and flies over probably in about 3-5 seconds with signaling and communication unknown it would take a heck of a long time. First you have to seek out the drone since it's a stealth drone. Let's say that you figured that out. Then you have to somehow capture it's communications while it flies by and figure out the communication protocols (then crack the encryption most probably). Then you have to figure out a way to interact with it and make it accept your input. Being unable to test your theories and ideas you have to wait for it to fly around and then send your signals and watch for the results. You don't have much time and output to see the outcome of simple tests and understand if your "hack" attempt really worked or not. Let's say you were really lucky and really really smart and the guys who engineered the drone were really dumb (well, I believe that's possible from a security point of view since these devices are supposedly "secret tech" the designers might have leaned on "security through obscurity") you managed to find a way to run arbitrary commands on the drone remotely....

Do you really need to reverse-engineer the plane after this? You've effectively reverse-engineered the drone to figure out its stealth technology, its communication AND managed to find vulnerabilities in it. It would make sense to try to salvage it for data but beyond that you've effectively reverse-engineered the plane already. Reverse-engineering is important because trying to hack into unknown technology is called "black box" hacking and you don't know anything about it. You need to get information about it to get an edge. That's why you try to reverse it. If you've already found a way to hack it game is over anyways.

Long story short, I can't believe Iran actually hacked the drone but I also do believe that everything is possible in IT and the explanations are usually very simple once they are given to you by people who have figured it out I however hope that they actually did that because Stuxnet was really sinister and it would be nice to see the Iranians upping the game.

reply to post by FurvusRexCaeli


AES was like in 1998. Then came the quantum cryptography. Which was then broken by some Russian MSc. students. Back in late 2008 or early 2009 if I'm not mistaken. Don't really know what came after that. Proprietary military tech is probably unknown to us and always will be since they tend to stay ahead of the public tech.