Posted on 01/01/2016 1:03:33 PM PST by KeyLargo
Drug Cartels Are Hacking US Border Patrol Drones Border patrol drones are vulnerable to GPS spoofing attacks
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency are reporting on incidents where drug traffickers have hacked unmanned air vehicles (UAVs, drones) in order to illegally and secretly cross the US-Mexican border.
UAVs have become a common presence in the US military, but they have also spread to other US law enforcement agencies like local police and border patrol.
Unlike their military counterparts, which cost millions of dollars, the drones used by other law enforcement agencies are much smaller, due to the smaller budgets allocated to the acquisition of such vehicles.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.softpedia.com ...
Ping
Hey, this one looks big enough to carry at least a 80286 chip, and some software for encrypting and countermeasures.
If we want to.
Maybe the drone can deliver some AKs while in the area.
Our govt is willfully ignorant and incompetent. The whole world laughs at us.
We need a President that will kick ass and take names. Fire the incompetents.
Somewhere along the line, some pretty sophisticated assistance is being given the drug cartel people.
The drug cartels are little if any better than ISIS itself, and there may be a de facto alliance between the two thugocracies.
By Aliya Sternstein April 27, 2015
Research studies on drone vulnerabilities published in recent years essentially provided hackers a how-to guide for hijacking unmanned aircraft, an Israeli defense manufacturer said Monday.
A reallife downing of a CIA stealth drone by Iranians occurred a month after one such paper was published, noted Esti Peshin, director of cyber programs for Israel Aerospace Industries, a major defense contractor. In December 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Iran navigated a CIA unmanned aerial vehicle safely down to the ground by manipulating the aircraft’s GPS coordinates.
The 2011 study, co-authored by Nils Ole Tippenhauer of ETH Zurich and other ETH and University of California academics, was titled “The Requirements for Successful GPS Spoofing Attacks.” The scholars detailed how to mimic GPS signals to fool GPS receivers that aid navigation.
“Its a PDF file… essentially, a blueprint for hackers, Peshin said.
Peshin said she does not know whether the CIA drone was overtaken using GPS spoofing or even whether the attacker read the study. But she underscored how easily available the publication is online.
“You can Google, just look up ‘Tippenhauer its the first result in Google. Look up ‘UAV cyberattacks’ — it’s the third one. ‘UAV GPS spoofing attacks the first one,” Peshin said. She was speaking at the Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Intelligence conference, an Israeli-American summit held in Washington.
In the study, the researchers explained where an attacker must be located to generate fake signals capable of fooling GPS receivers. They also described ways to replace legitimate signals with an attacker’s bogus signals, so the target ends up “losing the ability to calculate its position.”
Read at: http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2015/04/heres-how-you-hack-drone/111229/
Drug dealers pose a major danger to us in many ways. Recently there has been discussion about heroin epidemic. The most additive drug is black tar heroin, and all of the dealers are illegal aliens from Mexico.
They have destroyed entire communities and are spreading. An odd fact I read about them is that they are ordered to sell black tar, which has enormously high overdose rate, only to WHITES.
The US government has long underestimated the communications-electronics capabilities of the cartels. To their credit, they used millions of dollars to buy top of the line systems, including advanced encryption, electronic intelligence gathering against the DEA and Coast Guard, and everything else they needed, including jamming, Internet “black-hat hackers”, and lots of informers.
They even went so far as to include deep cover mole agents, who would only function if major stakes were involved, so are very hard to detect.
News
How Mexican drug cartels target social networkers
Last updated Dec 11, 2015,
Dave Copeland
One of the main questions following this month’s brutal murders of people who were accused of posting information about Mexico’s hyperviolent drug cartels has been how were the cartels able to determine the identities of people who thought they were making anonymous posts.
A barely-noticed article from this summer may shed light on the cartels’ methods: in addition to recruiting armed mercenaries, corrupt politicians and crooked cops, cartels like Los Zetas appear to also be actively recruiting hackers, sometimes forcibly.
While hackers have primarily been recruited to carry out more traditional crimes, such as credit card cloning and cyber money laundering, it is possible they may have also been brought into the cartels to help identify people who share information about drug running activity on social networks.
Posts on Mexican crime blogs and on social networks like Twitter have become vital in tracking cartel movements as journalists — fearing they will be executed — have shied away from covering the cartels.
Blog del Narco, one of the leading voices in cartel coverage, claims it was started because because “the media and government in Mexico try to pretend that nothing is happening, because the media is intimidated and the government has apparently been bought.†Other residents of the areas hit hardest by the violence turn to Twitter, following updates on hash tags like #mexicorojo.
“La información es poder, un concentrador de noticias y datos,†Phil Dumphy tweeted to the thread on Wednesday. (Loosely translated: information is power, a source of news and facts.)
Posts on the #mexicorojo hash tag range from retweeting of mainstream news articles to expressions of outrage to hyper-specific details about gang activities and movement throughout Mexico. The posts can also be grim:
“At least 50 executed at the end of the week,†Luis Cárdenas López posted on Monday, updating the ever-mounting death toll. More than 40,000 people have been killed or gone missing in the past decade..
http://www.dailydot.com/news/mexican-drug-cartels-hackers-target-networkers/
Nothing replaces boots-on-the-border...
There has been a FORTUNE spent on ‘electronic’ border control and it’s a joke! Has never, will never work. Lots of cronyism and $$ wasted to political operatives who want to keep the border open though!
Now,we know Obama and Jeh Johnson aren’t even trying, but the R’s weren’t any better.
July 2006 This guy was in charge of much of the electronic border patrol purchases.
The President nominates David L. Norquist, brother of Grover Norquist to Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Homeland Security.
Now Mr. Norquist is nominated to handle the funds at HOMELAND SECURITY after not being able to do the same same for the Defense Dept?
September 22, 2006
The SBI Net contract -”virtual fence”- LOOK who will handle the money!
Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff announced Thursday, the implementation of a high tech, high priced deal with Boeing for “virtual border security”. What will be interesting about this is if David Norquist, recently appointed by Pres. Bush to handle the finances at homeland security does as bad a job as he did with handling the more than questionable spending on Haliburton with the Defense Dept. Norquist is the brother of Grover Norquist, the White House policy maker for immigration/amnesty/open borders and founder of the Islamic Institute.
May 27, 2006 - The Senate also confirmed David L. Norquist as Homeland Security’s chief financial officer, and former Secret Service director Ralph Basham as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
May 8, 2006 -
DHS Nominee for CFO Grilled About Role in Hiding Alleged Overcharges by Halliburton [snip]
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=david+norquist
EXactly!
See post 11
Cost about 9 million. They get this basic fact wrong.
Have secure links.
Cartels can’t hack them.
No report of the kind this article references.
Border Patrol does not operate the drone.
Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine do. The fact the article gets this basic fact wrong indicates they are not well informed.
And GPS spoofing takes a lot of power to over-ride the signal as these platforms fly well above 10,000 feet. And the operators have INS back-up so even if GPS went down for whatever reason, they would not be affected. Additionally, there is at all times a man flying the platform and a system operator—not an autonomous system.
Happy New Year, AuntB...
Love and Hugs to you and yours !!!
You too, honey!!!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR to both of you young ladies !!
Stay Safe !!!
Hi Squantos!! Happiest of New Years to you as well!
The drone hackers should be hit with mortar attacks.
The poppy fields in Mexico should be dusted with herbicides.
My thoughts exactly. We are talking 1Qs in the 80-85 range, unless they are recruiting from Eastern Europe now.
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