Iran, with help, hacked US military GPS encryption codes to get the drone

Well IF TRUE, and I repeat, IF TRUE, this is very very very bad. (anyway you CANNOT afford to ignore this)

Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer

Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.

First, a very important fact... The military uses a different version of GPS than the civilians and it's ENCRYPTED.

That means that :

1 - Iran jammed the ENCRYPTED signal to the drone. (so it couldn't go back to the proper coordinates)
2 - Iran (with probably foreign help) BROKE the encryption key of the drone.

That means that ANY weapon out there that the US military uses that relies on GPS is COMPROMISED. Yes they probably use different encryption keys for different weapons (although this is the military after all, so you never know) but still, if ONE encryption key was hacked.. it means all the others can be hacked too.

So IF Iran is telling the truth (you cannot afford to assume they are lying otherwise you could be in real trouble), the Pentagon needs to put ALL THEIR EXPERTS ON THIS... and develop a new encryption signal (and a way better one) AS SOON AS POSSIBLE... because right now, the US weapons CANNOT BE RELIED ON at 100% if you were to face China/Russia.

The US military has a BIG WEAKNESS right now... better hope the ``enemies`` don't take advantage of it.

BTW, there's almost no chances that Iran pulled that off alone. China/Russia helped them for sure.

Good thing they just passed a 600+ billion dollar defense bill, they can build a new drone if rummsfeld doesn't steal it all first.

I have no reason to doubt iran did this, though if I were a neocon i'd have plenty of reason to deny it.

So, the yanks drones have been compromised. Bet there are thousands of relatives of people murdered by those terrible things who are cheering right now. Iran knows how they work? Great stuff! Be even better though, if the world could work out how the sick minds in the yank government work. Better still would be if any country could work out how to get rid of those sick people running America and creating wars everywhere to simply make money! They have to go!

Originally posted by Vitchilo
First, a very important fact... The military uses a different version of GPS than the civilians and it's ENCRYPTED.

Actually that may not be important.
All that was required was to get to the programming of the drone and change the latitude and longitude of the "home base". This, according to the story, can be done while it is in the air. That makes sense of course because in the normal course of events, ground operators would wish to change where the drone will go to, "on the fly".
Its this course reprogramming that would have been hacked, not the reception of the GPS signals, which would go on being received as normal.

Slow down a bit. First they shot it down. The damage to the craft or lack of it was questioned. Now someone is claiming to have hacked it. Next they will claim to have reverse engineered previously crashed drone and built there own. Which is it? Now that they have said this they destroyed their own believability.

Originally posted by MrStyx
Slow down a bit. First they shot it down. The damage to the craft or lack of it was questioned. Now someone is claiming to have hacked it. Next they will claim to have reverse engineered previously crashed drone and built there own. Which is it? Now that they have said this they destroyed their own believability.

Well, can you AFFORD to just dismiss this as propaganda? What if you are wrong? You are pretty much screwed if you are wrong.

Are you willing to put everything on the line and not look into this/reinforce the encryption that the US military uses?

reply to post by Vitchilo

A related thread you might find interesting. Crashed drone was looking at Iran nuclear sites (Not a duplicate of this one btw).

It seems to have gone from "Fake! Its not a real US drone!" to "Well, maybe...." and now to "Yup, it happened" The media needs a good kick in the pants for printing unfounded and wild stories. Eventually the truth will out...? Following this thread too looking for more and more accurate info.

On a sidenote, I hope Iran release those codes. The idea of using taxpayer dollars for private satellites seems wrong. I'm sure we could use pinpoint accurate GPS for peaceful purposes if we were allowed.

Why would they even try to hack it? The way I understood it was that if comms were lost (ie; jammed signal), the drone immediately tries to land itself safely wherever it is at the time. Stupid idea IMO, and a design flaw but it sounds like the Iranians are trying to make themselves sound a lot cleverer than they really are.

I just wonder if the big Lockheed Martin hack was more than let on to. link And then there was L-3 Communications Holdings. link And Northrop Grumman being hacked. Not to mention RSA Security that started it all.link.

Then just after all this hacking took place. Iran buys Avtobaza ground-based electronic intelligence and jamming system from Russia. link Now you have a downed Stealth UAV RQ-170 made by Lockheed Martin. And don't forget the GPS guidence most likely came from L3-Communications. link link

reply to post by Vitchilo


I'm not totally dismissing it. I'm just choosing not take their word for it just yet. Had they outright said this in the beginning I may have but they said they shot it down. Why lie then put it on display with no damage. Then have to change your story.

What people fail to realize is the one thing the US knows is war. Right or wrong we are battle tested, tried and true. No other armies have seen this type of sustained action. Not Russia, not China, or [insert next world power here] decade upon decade, we stay practicing whether its Asia, Middle East, wherever. We been doing this a long time. Too long. No amount of tech or simulation can prepare you for it. We got a clear advantage over anyone and its hard to deny.

You are dreaming if you think American couch potatoes are "battle tested" more than, say, Africans who have known nothing BUT war their entire lives. Crazed Arabs who have been fighting each other for thousands of years. Chinese who have done nothing but kung fu their entire lives. Russians, just by surviving up there.

Americans are better at video games, and have drone death machines that are flown by remote. If the controls are anything like an Xbox control, any thirteen year old American kid can fly it like an ace. So the US gets the big advantage because they have the most high tech weaponry. You know, that ALL the people have paid for. So there can be mass slaughter by only a few. Like one million Iraqis killed with only five thousand American casualties. So, each American soldier has enough toys to kill two hundred men. How heroic they are.

But, what if those toys stop working? What if the ENEMY GETS CONTROL OF THEM? Oh, not such a big advantage, then. Through hacking, theoretically anyone could gain total control of not just drones, but ALL airplanes, fighter jets, bombers carrying nukes, anything. Aircraft carriers. Destroyers. Battleships. Hell, they could even blind the ground pounders night vision and high tech aiming on their fancy guns. Now what?

Calm down and think logically for a moment. What is Africa going to do? Think of their army . Russia has old tech and we aren't fighting hand to hand to use Kung Fu with the Chinese. We will crush their sub Navy no problem and bombard them from the shore. . We are in everyone's backyard. Anyone on our borders is an ally. Where you going to attack America. All nations can do is defend their home turf. Its not blind nationalism nor is it arrogance. The logistics of taking and attacking this land are a serious problem. US is a big land to cover.

Common misconception. We may be fat but not lazy we work more hours than any nation out there. Doesn't mean we are more productive for it but we do work it. That's all we know to do is work. We don't get holiday, automatic vacations, or health care for free.

Nothing was stated about tech. I'm talking actual battle bullets whizzing by your heads. OMG Im gonna die. Its about deploying battle strategies. In enemy territory. We are a boxer with long arms. You really believe we would allow each and every one of our systems to be hackable by an enemy? like one code fits all?

What gives you the idea that ANYONE is even contemplating attacking the US?

Take a room full of five year olds, and Mike Tyson. Do you think any of those kids are going to try to attack him? I don't think so. Even if he kept KOing little kids right and left, claiming they were attacking him with their pacifiers, the other kids would probably refrain from attacking him, dontcha think? Pretty much the same thing.

The US spends the most MONEY on weapons. That's all. We don't even have that large of an army, manpower wise. What if we lose the high tech advantage? As in, EMP strikes knocking out all GPS satellites? That alone would render much of the Navy and Air Force useless.

Then what?

Check this out:

Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States armed forces in mid-2002, likely the largest such exercise in history. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August 15 and cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military "transformation"—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more powerful weaponry and tactics. The simulated combatants were the United States, referred to as "Blue", and an unknown adversary in the Middle East, "Red".

[edit] Exercise action Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper, used old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World War II light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications. Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected.

[1] At this point, the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed; this was later justified by General Peter Pace as follows: "You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which is a better way to do it?"

[2] After the reset, both sides were ordered to follow predetermined plans of action, leading to allegations that the exercise was scripted and "$250 million was wasted".

[3] Due to his concerns about the scripted nature of the new exercise, Van Riper resigned his position in the midst of the war game. Van Riper later expressed concern that the wargame's purpose had shifted to reinforce existing doctrine and notions of infallibility within the U.S. military rather than serve as a learning experience. He was quoted in the ZDF–New York Times documentary The Perfect War[4] as saying that what he saw in MC02 echoed the same view promoted by the Department of Defense under Robert McNamara before and during the Vietnam War, namely that the U.S. military could not and would not be defeated.

In other words, a HUGE battle group of the US Navy was defeated soundly by a simulated ragtag group of guerrillas, using primitive weapons against all the power and might of the high tech US Navy. The Navy was so horrified they STOPPED THE EXERCISE, and then ordered the Red team to basically allow themselves to be defeated. Van Riper quit in disgust.

reply to post by 17sok

But weren't these drones also supposed to be infected with a computer virus leaving a possible back-door for "hackers"?

reply to post by Vitchilo


"Well IF TRUE, and I repeat, IF TRUE, this is very very very bad. (anyway you CANNOT afford to ignore this) "

Not bad for me.. I'm ignoring it ass irrelevant to my life.

If accurate, it's great news!!.. bad news for the war mongers and death exporting sociopaths is great news.. fantastic news!

Someone in Iran should post their hijacking methods on the inter-webs with a "how to" so everyone can get in on the drone snatching.. set the elitists back a few years, take away one of their assassination, tools, delay innocent deaths.. win/win/win.