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Re:Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones by naveensundar on Thursday December 17, 2009 @01:44AM (#1000565)
The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control.

What about the uplink?

Re:Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones by Retric on Thursday December 17, 2009 @08:11AM (#1000919)
I assume that's encrypted for obvious reasons. However, encrypting live video feeds requires a lot more prepossessing power than encrypting telemetry so they apparently left it out.

Honestly, from a classic military standpoint encrypted video does little for you. If you can intercept the transmission then you know where the drone is. The only advantage is knowing what it is looking at, but a traditional army is large enough knowing something is in the area is enough. It's only gorilla style fighting when it becomes particularly useful.

Re:Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones by stcredzero on Thursday December 17, 2009 @11:28AM (#1001266)
Guerrilla, BTW.

The thing is, these drones' primary use is against insurgents, AFAIK.

Re:Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones by dflock on Thursday December 17, 2009 @02:11PM (#1001648)
It is now, but I don't think this was intended to their primary mission profile when they were designed, over a decade ago. A lot of the intended uses were more traditional than the ones that reality has presented.