Navy Wants Cyber Weapons That Shoot Data Beams 123
ectotherm writes "By 2018, the US Navy hopes to equip its fighter jets with the ability to shoot data streams containing 'specialized waveforms and algorithms,' useful in an electronic attack or cyber-invasion. A few non-classified details here."
Can you fit them on the heads of sharks? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm just asking?
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Only if the data is modulated in a collimated, uniform wavelength beam of light known as a "laser".
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Not just plain sharks.... Frickien' Sharks... with Data Beams
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Re:April Fools is over (Score:4, Funny)
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The article predates April 1.
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In other words, once.
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Welcome to erf!
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No surprise here: EMP weapons are not discriminate enough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse [wikipedia.org]
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Broken Link (Score:2)
The link is broken, how did this pass editing?
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the ac's "mirror" is a reported attack site... Is that enough for an IP ban?
What? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
So now we're trying to rick-roll enemy pilots in dog fights?
No, it's a cyber-invasion. The weapon unleashes a flood of A/S/L requests.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
American Pilot 1: Oh shit! They just launched missiles!
American Pilot 2: Quick, do a barrel roll!
American Pilot 1: I am saved!
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
I cite from the article'
'"We will tell you that in the world of the exciter, the holy grail is to get a universal design that can generate all the waveforms that you could possibly imagine," says Falco.'
Its pretty clear what they mainly want: Inject any analog waveform in any band to confuse radar with arbitrary objects. If the enemy radar gets a software upgrade which detects you last attempt, you just change your software. Up to now planes tracked by radar (missiles?) could jam the radar by fixed waveforms or the plane ejects some objects (which dont act like planes) to irritate the radar. With the proposes a system you can make the opponent see hundreds of things on the radar which look like planes and fly like planes. Heck you can even fake the transponder message of their own plane you just shot down.
You can use such a capability for choosen plaintext attacks (e.g. what do their systems send when a plane is entering a perimeter around the base), to confuse the enemy during active combat. If somebody uses radio links, and your crytographers are good enough you can also directly inject messages into enemy communications. Lets not forget that in asymmetric conflict the opponents of the USA very often have only the rudest communication means; the capability to control e.g. GSM communication during a battle could help in some places. Last but not least, you could help a plain cyberwar by injecting information here and there.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
People seem to be thinking this thorough as a parallel to what we think of as cyber attacks in the internet world today where viruses and trojans take control of our PCs for nefarious purposes. And while that may be desirable to the Navy too, everything in warfare is moving toward digital communications these days. There are a number of types of tactical data links, communicating virtually everything that one battlefield entity might need to know from another and it's only going to get more widespread over time.
You don't need to "take over" an enemy radar when you can just tell it to report whatever you want to its operator via spoofed waveforms. Or, if a good guy plane could fool others into thinking it was an enemy plane (with a spoofed radar signature, IFF, etc.), the benefits are obvious.
The difficulties are defeating encryption and decoding messages/waveforms to be able to inject specific bits of data as seen fit. Though, a targeted DoS attack is probably not very difficult to achieve even now because if you flood a link with messages of the appropriate size, it still has to do some processing to decide that it can't do anything with them, possibly slowing or stopping legitimate messages.
Incidentally, I work in defense and I don't see my company listed in TFA so that sucks because this would be an interesting project. Though, it might be involved in some way that I just don't know about (because it's a huge company, not necessarily because of secrecy or anything).
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I see spoofing enemy planes as having somewhat limited and problematic utility. After all, commanders generally know what planes they've sent where. So if they see a spoofed plane heading in when it's supposed to be heading out, or on station, or in the maintenance hangar, it's pretty likely that they'll radio them on voice, at which point the pilot had better hope he speaks the language and sounds vaguely like the guy he's supposed to be.
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As you pointed out, this kind of stuff would be fairly easy to uncover, but even brief moments of confusion can be crucial.
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand electronic countermeasures are cheaper than chaff, but cheaper still are electronic counter-counter measures. They're fighting an uphill battle because:
Ever since the Hellfire missile was reprogrammed to arc above a target and strike downward (as opposed to track-beam-to-target), the sophistication of software on weaponry is the real arms race. Consider, for example, the following sequence of advances in technology:
It's just your classic arms race, folks.
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All good. Until you run into an enemy with anti radiation capabilities [wikipedia.org]. Their radar systems may support target acquisition. But one tactic is to deploy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bistatic_radar [slashdot.org]">bistatic radar, where the transmitter is sacrificial (so as not to lose assets to your anti radiation weaponry. But they trick you into turning on your jamming equipment and then target that.
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Article written in: March 31, 2010
Subject of april fools? If a plane or any object is "beaming" any sort of radiation, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to pinpoint where in the sky. You wouldn't need radar, just some simple triangulation.
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Not if you emit it in a highly directed way (note that they mention antennna arrays). Fuck if you have two planes there you could even fake your position should somebody imagine he can track you by simple triangulation (or even timing measurements). Its also diffucult to track a spread spectrum/narrow pulse (like radar) echo. Especially if its emited at a center frequency close to the strong signal of the orginal radar station.
The capability to reshape the beam dynamically will lower its em signature.
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Some of the early active countermeasures worked like this after they noticed a countermeasure tumbling at slightly faster than the sampling frequency of the detector caused the missile to think it was moving in a different direction.
Now they've got larger sensors, so they might not need to scan by moving the sensor, but I can imagine similar things being possible. Heck, you wouldn't even need two planes if the emitter can be packaged in a bomb or countermeasure casing.
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Both points are valid. If you can generate arbitrary waveforms, you can basically match whatever waveform the enemy radar uses and send it back at the appropriate time to create false echoes that the enemy can't filter out.
But your second point is the big one here, I think. Military wireless networks are becoming more and more common. Battlespace management systems (where every asset and enemy on the battlefield is tracked and this information spread among all vehicles or even individual soldiers) are becom
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Sweet. Sounds like we're only one step away from: "remodulate the waveform of the main deflector dish!
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In other words, digital data judo...
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Hello, Bomb? (Score:1)
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They will be surprised, when they discover that An-2 does not have any electronics.
This sounds like a scam (Score:2, Insightful)
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Maybe blasting ps2/usb keyboard waveforms to execute keystrokes (by controller in keyboard or just onto data line)?
Maybe blast certain carrier waves so that unwanted modulation happens inside the device, transmitting data that wouldn't normally be transmitted?
I imagine these are the types of things they're thinking of for controlling...creating so much interference that the interference couples onto data buses and executes some commands...or something similar.
I agree that having specialized systems probably
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So, fuzzing basically. Then you have the enemy responding by spending more money and weight shielding the electronics.
Maybe not the most dramatic effect, but anything to give them a harder time.
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As I understand it, your argument is that on-chip encrypters will always be better any decryption/(insertion/jamming)/encryption technique. Just to be clear, are you arguing that they cannot do it NOW, or that they cannot do it by 2018?
The DoD/Navy think that we can do it by 2018. Frankly, I value their opinion more than yours.
Oh no... (Score:5, Funny)
...they're shooting data beams at our Gibson! Release the Da Vinci virus!!!
Down for me (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Down for me (Score:4, Funny)
This vicious slashdotting will teach them about the nature of hardware disabling data beams.
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Not a bad idea, really. You just need a way for the fighter to establish a high bandwidth link between the target and a few backbone providers, then post the target IP address in a link on Slashdot and viola! Instant DDOS, Slashdot style ;-)
Realistically, Slashdot's "effect" is fairly week these days compared to, say, showing up on Google Trends [google.com] or having your URL tweeted by a celebrity.
Yet another DARPA idea straight out of sci-fi (Score:2)
Typical DARPA. They'll put research funding into any idea that they've seen on Star Trek or read in a book somewhere.
The problem with "Cyber attacks" and "cyber space" is that they are too darn easy to defend against. Protecting your computers and hardware against a software virus is about as easy as protecting yourself from nerf gun darts. People get careless, and hackers get through, but it requires incompetence on the part of the system admins to not isolate critical systems from the damn internet. M
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They'll put research funding into any idea that they've seen on Star Trek or read in a book somewhere.
It's led to most of their successes too though. That airplane-mounted laser that shoots down missles from the air? Totally sci-fi, and not even the book kind, that was given to them by Hollywood. It was a success in that it would work, just not in getting funding.
Their basic motto is "try everything and see what ends up working". Do you think most of their innovations started out as "holy shit this is obvious" concepts, or ones that 99% of the population would say "that's fucking retarded" when told about?
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Er, not really. If you're familiar with TEMPEST this idea is really intriguing.
For those of you that are unaware, TEMPEST attacks are where you deduce information by monitoring the interference electronics put out. Usually RF interference, but you can deduce a hell of a lot from power usage too. This stuff ranges from reading keyboard and mouse input to reading what your monitor is displaying. This is all 15-20 year old tech, and just shy of civilian level already. Sourceforge even had an mp3 player that
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"We will tell you that in the world of the exciter, the holy grail is to get a universal design that can generate all the waveforms that you could possibly imagine," says Falco.
Sounds like Software-defined Radio [wikipedia.org]. You (yes, you) can buy one for under $1000 USD last I checked, but amps and antennas will cost you more.
Most of the engineering effort in SDR goes into the software, and there is of course a relevant open source project. To weaponize the tech you'll want to assemble a library of proven techniques,
Re:Yet another DARPA idea straight out of sci-fi (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, it's kind of far-fetched. OTOH, if there is something exploitable in the electronics of an enemy system, it could be very useful to use that for a combat advantage. Imagine a comms system that can get overloaded with corrupt packets, and reboots itself. Even if you can only make an enemy radio unreliable instead of taking it out completely, he might miss out on key intel or orders.
Re:Yet another DARPA idea straight out of sci-fi (Score:4, Interesting)
The story blurb is of course ridiculous but i think you are downplaying the extent to which software/system vulnerabilities will be a factor in future conflicts. Especially due to the assymetrical, break once, break everywhere dynamics of attacking widely deployed IT.
I'm not sure who the US will use this against, but I suspect many people will be able to use IT attacks against the US. And it's going to be terribly effective, because getting new IT created, tested, deployed, and humans trained on how to run it, takes us a lot of time and money. But once some guy figures out how to break it... usually it's broken everywhere at once.
IOW: attacking the US's use of IT is going to be a force multiplier for people that don't like us. And they'll probably be able to do it on the cheap. Whatever they cannot figure out themselves, they can pay someone $5-$50k in Russia to figure out how to do for them.
I've heard that for a long time, ground-to-sat control signals weren't authenticated or encrypted. For a long time, screwing with Uncle Sam was kind of a "security through obscurity" sort of affair, but the clock has pretty much run down on that concept; seeing what kind of successful attacks are waged will be interesting.
Suppose for the sake of argument that some GPS-guidance system were using an off the shelf receiver that had support for the D-GPS standard [the stuff where a terrestrial signal is used to enhance accuracy]. Even though the military can use the "military grade" GPS, more and more work is getting accompolished using consumer receivers, so its only natural to assume that some may have this "local radio" feature that i seem to remember.
So what's to stop someone who has a factory he doesn't want getting blown up to introduce a huge "correction" offset into the local signal. Perhaps you can misdirect people and potentially munitions [not aware of any GPS guided munitions though].
Or suppose that our ground units aren't using encrypted comms all the time? suppose you've got a radio listener that records everything it hears, and correlates that with times, channels, etc. Some association rule mining and you have gleaned a working model of who is using the radio when, and what they are saying. Now you decide to start playing back the audio you previously recorded, and for some amount of time, everyone using radios is _really_ confused. Maybe you even call in a false operation or movement. Maybe you convince the US to bomb an orphanage by giving a _very_ authentic sounding (you just replay Private Pyle's voice, after all) request for ordinance at coordinates you control.
The weak link in all of these computer-aided decision systems is that humans beleive them when they shouldn't, and that humans don't do enough to protect them from tampering. rather than some kind of magic wave [which could very well work, for instance by somehow distrurbing the small gyroscopes that inertial nav systems use... but again, that would be ANTI aircraft instead of launched from aircraft], figuring out how to mis-use the technology to cause problems for the humans will be where successfull attacks come from.
If I were going to try and wreck the superior tech advantages of the US military, I'd start by understanding the sensor inputs to the machines that do the thinking. Are laser guided munitions effective in heavy fog or other light-attenuation situations? Can i build goggles that let me see where directed laser energy is currently lighting things up? If so, i can predict targets. If i have boots on the ground near the target, i can find out exactly where the illuminator is positioned (by placing a sheet 10m infront of hte target and working it through a range of motion to see when i am/am not illuminated). If i use several of my own laser designators, can I re-direct a laser-seeking munitions head?
The professionals have been playing war games a lot longer that I've been writing slashdot posts. But I know from an entire lifetime of working with software that there will always be bugs, and humans will beleive the machine when they shouldn't.
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This is actually an interesting mental challenge. Could one posit a scenario where the U.S. military was actually defeated by an adversary that didn't have comparable technology and/or resources? Historically, it has happened. The Chinese forces the U.S. to retreat in the Korean war because they had ludicrous numbers of infantry troops in the field. However, the U.S. did manage to defeat their forces after regrouping. In Vietnam and in Iraq, the enemy has the means to send a lot of young men home in a
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The only scenario I thought of where this happens is where the enemy develops some kind of breakthrough, singularity level technology before the United States.
Your premise is that we might be beaten by a country with inferior technology and resources, yet you think that country will develop the singularity?
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Re:Yet another DARPA idea straight out of sci-fi (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is if we extrapolate the trends in computing to 2020 say, and we assume that huge number of devices that nobody thinks of might have by then a tiny processor with an IP (v6) address (eg think lightbulbs, windows, clothes, vehicles, air conditioners, hand-held tools, watches, helmets etc, etc), then it becomes really very hard to properly secure most buildings and assets.
In a war situation, you'd have troops moving about literally in a sea of potentially deadly gizmos with consumer grade quality of processing power, but even in friendly territory, building a truly secure working military base could turn out to be a complicated problem and maybe not possible.
What if nobody remembers that the cement in building C is connected to the internet and the firmware hasn't been updated (far fetched? There might be tiny sensors mixed into the cement, to help maintenance crews monitor the building better...)
It's likely that in 10 or 20 years, viruses designed to create random damage would be really hard to protect against, because a 100% controlled environment would be really hard to keep, and even 1% vulnerability could be exploited in a war scenario.
Today computer security is a lot easier, because there are so *few* computer systems, mostly big boxes with a local admin who can secure them.
Re:Yet another DARPA idea straight out of sci-fi (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah DARPA what have they ever come up with that's panned out?
Now if you excuse me I'm gonna go surf the net a bit more.
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This kind of sounds like the plane Johnny Depp's character was designing in The Astronaut's Wife.
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Typical DARPA. They'll put research funding into any idea that they've seen on Star Trek or read in a book somewhere.
Specifically, this idea was in Cowboy Bebop, although in that episode, they required a physical link (they fired grapples at each other).
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So it's kinda far fetched to plan on 0wnzoring your opponent's radars remotely by sending out data packets taking advantage of an exploit that your opponent can just patch with a firmware upgrade.
Even something as simple as a DoS attack that results in "enemy only gets 50% of orders" or "orders come 60 seconds later" could render a fairly valuable tactical advantage.
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Wow do you have no idea what you're talking about.
Just a small hint: "Cyber attacks" are more than just viruses, and the targets are more than just computers.
For example, TFA talks about a more sophisticated jamming that fools the enemy radar into thinking your one plane is many planes.
In the Navy (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure Navy guys have a lot of practice shooting coded "information" at each other during long stretches at sea.
TRON! (Score:2)
Not Paying Attention (Score:1)
Seriously, could you insert a memory wipe trojan in an embedded control computer for a radar guidance system, with this thing? Or are they thinking about emulating a flock of birds or something like that?
Interesting link.
I want a pony (Score:1, Insightful)
but that's not gonna fucking happen either.
Re:I want a pony (Score:4, Informative)
but that's not gonna fucking happen either.
Don't be so pessimistic! If you save your allowance, get a part-time job and cut back on buying snack foods, it could happen sooner than you think.
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Only on slashdot could a cutback in one's snackfood budget feed a horse.
hit 'em with a 404! (Score:3, Funny)
finish them off with a 500!
What exactly will they attack? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh-huh. The weapon is easy, convincing the enemy to add a weak point is the only snag.
Ooh! It's got waveforms! And algorithms!!
Okay, I'll assume that we infiltrate the enemy to attach an access point. Couldn't we just park a truck nearby and use a lower-power antenna? Or use an unsecured access point?
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It would have to be the cyber-equivalent of the enemy leaving a 2m thermal exhaust port exposed to the surface...
The first packets (Score:1)
It's a series of... (Score:2)
Since when is Ted Stevens designing weapons systems for the Navy?
Future Information Wars (Score:1)
Do a search someday on " Information Wars 2025, Air Force". The information is not always for machines. Our soldiers will have protection from nervous system interference. While the 'terrorists' will hear, feel, and see, etc what ever we project onto them. Ever notice how the Slashdot war helmet resembles the tin-foil hat?
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The geek shall inherit the technology (Score:2)
And if the whole thing started making us feel guilty we could just g
Had to happen sooner or later (Score:4, Funny)
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Go Navy or Whomever! (Score:2)
Let's hope this time they can figure out how to let the F-23/24/25/2whatever distinguish between a surface-to-air missile battery and a microwave oven emitter planted on a hospital.
That would be good. Maybe then they can take on the nine-year-old script kiddies and give them the spanking they deserve with this new data-stream shooter. With luck, they'll bring the project home at less than $3 trillion.
Rick Roll Rockets (Score:5, Funny)
What is this I don't even (Score:2)
Looks like their funding procedure was hacked by skr1pt kiddies.
Don't think this would be awesome? (Score:1)
Pew pew (Score:1)
STOP PLEASE!!!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Will everyone please stop ridiculing this article!
We must "shoot data streams containing 'specialized waveforms and algorithms" or the terrorists win!
This is obviously targetted at aggressive aliens.. (Score:2)
Re:Techniques generator (Score:4, Interesting)
So what you are saying is not only are we talking about war-driving at hypersonic speeds, but we're also bombing away at the Great Firewall of China in the process. I get it. Sort of like Top Gun meets The Matrix.
Only please God, please don't let Tom Cruise ever be Nemo, Mr. Anderson; whatever. No.
Unsecured wireless? (Score:1)
Battlestar Gallactica? (Score:3, Interesting)
Shot in a beam of data via the ECM systems and activated the "kill switch" 6 had planted in the new software.
As long as they could get the exploitable code into the system this might work.
Cue the "Windows for Warplanes" jokes...
In Other News (Score:2)
Type of prey? (Score:2)
My guess is that they will first focus on taking down UAVs made by terrorists. Those types of aircrafts will most likley use the public part of GPS. That signal is *easy* to overpower and/or fake. Same for control signals used by ordinary radio controlled crafts.
Data Beams (Score:1, Funny)
Data beams onto the enemy ship to save Riker who has been taken hostage by the aliens.
A data weapon? I know of some. (Score:2)
If the Navy really wants to kill people with excessive input, I know several people I could introduce them to. A few minutes of listening to these people and you want to kill yourself to get away as they never, ever, stop talking.
Modern warfare! (Score:1)
- Good! Let's BSOD the hell out of them!
- Capt'n! It appears they run Linux!
- Crap!
Simple brute force solution (Score:2)
Falco? (Score:2)
Falco went on to explain that the data beams would be fitted to their Arwings, enabling him, Fox, Peppy and Slippy to defeat Andross.