Hezbollah Hacked Israeli Military Radio 360
florescent_beige writes, "Newsday is reporting that Hezbollah was able to monitor secure Israeli military communications, perhaps using technology supplied by Iran, during the recent Lebanon war. A former Israeli general, speaking anonymously, called the results 'disastrous' for Israel. The story reports that an anonymous Lebanese source said that Hezbollah might have taken advantage of Israeli soldiers' mistakes in following secure radio procedures. The radio gear uses frequency hopping and encryption." The article identifies the Israeli communications equipment as the US-designed Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System.
The Real News (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance during World War II, even after the allies had broken a German code or devised a method to figure out that day's cipher string, they would still go about their routine of acting like they didn't know what the Germans were going to do. Meaning that if a cargo ship was headed towards a line of submarines, they might find it best to sacrifice that cargo ship at the possibility of saving a warship later in the day. If they responded directly to communications, the Germans would continue to change the code or investigate ways to improve their encryption methods and upgrade Enigma. Necessity breeds innovation and you don't want your enemies feeling a strong necessity for better encryption. I'd like to cite my source but I don't believe Simon Singh's The Code Book is available online and that's where I read this.
How interesting that Hezbollah would have the shortsightedness to let this crucial knowledge publicly available. However, this can be expected when the primary morale boosting for troops and citizens is bragging about your capabilities. I highly doubt they consider the conflict over and suspect that Isreal will now heavily ramp up its encryption & security to the highest standards since I believe that's one of the few things the United States will not export to them (see Phil Zimmerman's FBI case file on exporting encryption programs to foreign soil).
As the department this summary is coming from reveals, guerilla warfare depends heavily on information like this. I'm surprised it's gone public that they had access to it.
Re:The Real News (Score:5, Insightful)
That wouldn't make mushc sense either (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That wouldn't make mushc sense either (Score:5, Insightful)
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I remember beign hti bya gullet.. My god blood evrywhere.
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Re:That wouldn't make mushc sense either (Score:4, Insightful)
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The worst thing the Israeli's could do is let on that they know the full capabilities of an enemy. There is tremendous utility in feeding an enemy false information.
Never show your cards, ever.
Hmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
There is also the perspective that obscurity is not the same as security. If you have secret A and are trying to prevent B from knowing it, you can NEVER be certain that B does not have that information. If they obtain knowledge of A, and keep that hidden from you, then your obscurity becomes a weapon against you. This is the problem the Germans had once the Enigma ciphers were broken. By relying totally on obscurity, the Germans became extremely vulnerable. Obscurity is a VERY dangerous tool.
By far the best tactic is to assume the enemy could know everything - not necessarily that they will, but that they could. This introduces a degree of fault-tolerence into actions. It does not rely on an assumed weakness that may not exist (and therefore make those carrying out the action the weaker party), but assumes that the opposition is as competent and capable as it chooses to be. As this is often much closer to reality, it is a better assumption to make.
In terms of encryption, for example, using an obscure algorithm puts you at gigantic risk as it can't have had the eyeballs to verify that it is indeed secure. Furthermore, people are more likely to use weak keys, as they won't see the point in taking care, as they're working on the basis that they don't need to. A very stupid practice. The best you could do is make the algorithm public, utterly destroy any delusions of absolute mental superiority, and force people to work damn hard to use the algorithm correctly. If the enemy finds a fault and keeps it secret, they would have done so anyway, so you lose nothing. If Joe Smurf on sci.crypto finds a fault and publishes it, you will have time to fix the bug or switch to another method. Overall, you lose nothing.
Assuming the enemy is an idiot, merely because they're the enemy, is the best way to lose a battle or a war. Either that or acting stupid.
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If I had access to my enemy's supposedly secret information, I would not take advantage of what I had learned in case they could work out that their channels were compromised. Until the day came that losing the ability to monitor their communications was less important than whatever strike I could make with the information gleaned.
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Think! Think a little! Who made those radios and who uses them other than Isreal. The USA Army uses them in Iraq. This means the US Army battlefield radios are hacked. This is a may as well give up and die for US Troups and explains much of what is going on in Iraq. Another fine case of D. Rumsfeld and his army of one thinking. Single point failure is death to any group. If I need to explain this any further....!
Remember all the talk after 9/11/2001 about needing all radios to chat one to another!
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The radios are not hacked. It was the Israeli procedure that was hacked -- or more precisely, it was the sloppiness that was hacked.
Any cryptosystem can be hacked if it is (f
Re:The Real News (Score:5, Interesting)
This is different from the way U.S. intelligence services handle secrets. They maintained the fiction surrounding the Venona decrypts for 50 years. However, the Soviets found out about the project somewhere around 1948 from a spy. And, the U.S. then found out from one of their spies that the Soviets had found out about Venona. So both sides' intelligence agencies knew about the break, yet it was kept secret from the public. Even though the intel was germane to the FBI prosecutions of several traitors, including the Rosenbergs (who were very obviously guilty after having read the Venona decrypts.) The info could also have been used to verify Senator McCarthy's allegations (or prove him wrong.) Lots of good could have come from knowing the truth.
Re:The Real News (Score:4, Interesting)
Even the NSA doesn't go quite that far; in this article [nsa.gov] they only claim the intercepts show that Ethel " may have known about her husband's activities" (my emphasis).
Innocent until proven guilty, right?
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Wow, a post from the past!
Sigh...
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I hate when people throw this out all the time. Yes, they are innocent until proven guilty. He didn't round up the Rosenbergs and throw them in jail without trial. He is not a government official making an official statement. He has an opinion, a very distinct opinion, and he stated it.
No, he stated as a fact that the VENONA intercepts showed that the Rosenbergs (plural) were "obviously guilty", which contradicted what I knew about the case (which could have been wr
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one of the many that doesn't understand the "seperation of church and state" clause also
Indeed? Exactly what "clause" are you "quoting" there anyways?
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The SINGARS uses Hardware Encryption, in addition to frequency hopping mode to ensure that all traffic remains secure.
With the an omni antenna and a spectrum analyzer you can spot and triangulate frequency hopping transmissions, but you aren't going to be listening in without obtaining all the crypto keys.
The fact that they claim they were able to crack it is only possible if they obtained a fully operational radio with loaded fill device with that time periods keys. Then they wou
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You many need a multi band antenna but I doubt that most frequency hopping systems hop out of band.
Triangulation with omni antennas (Score:3, Insightful)
Some Googling reveals that somebody at least has thought of the same concept (and got a patent on it already, although it was filed in 1977, so I think that means it's exp
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I can give you a simplified explanation. Measuring the signal strength gives you an idea of how far away the signal is coming from, geographically in the form of a circle around you (assuming the transmitter is not airborne). If you take two measurements from two locations at the same time, then the transmitter is located where the two circles intersect (which is at two possible points, so you don't know for sure yet). If you take three mea
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For the poster who asserts that Iran articles are a dime-a-dozen these days - while some are appa
Probably only works once (Score:5, Insightful)
This is because it's not like Israel is that far behind the U.S. in terms of mathematics, computers, or encryption, so not exporting to them wouldn't change their strategic posture much at all, and would just deny business to a U.S. corporation in favor of a homegrown one (e.g. IMI).
If there are concerns about exporting to Israel, it's probably more because folks here are afraid that the stuff will be resold and eventually make it to countries that are hostile to the U.S., not really because anyone fears Israel directly. After all, although it's never been publicly admitted, I think there's a very good chance that the U.S. has given Israel nuclear weapons -- I doubt we'd bicker about a few lines of encryption code (that they could probably replicate domestically) if they wanted to buy it.
As to the idiocy of giving away your capabilities if you've successfully broken your enemy's communication system, you're totally right (and yes, it is Singh that goes into much detail about this in his book). However, it may be that Hezbollah either doesn't have the internal safeguards to prevent this type of leak, or is more interested in the public opinion to be gained through bragging than in actual operational superiority. (Or, is so convinced of their own superiority that they don't care, i.e. they've fallen victim to their own rhetoric; this doesn't seem implausible.)
Based on the past few conflicts and the reading I've done about them, the Israelis strike me as being pretty good at doing tough self-assessments and changing the way they fight in order to avoid repeating mistakes. If there is another Israeli/Hezbollah conflict (and I have no reason to believe that there won't be), I would look for some very different tactics on the part of Israel. This is the way war works: you see the greatest changes to tactics and strategy as a result of defeat or near-defeat than you do from victory.
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The real news is that this made it into the news.
No, it isn't really. You would think it would be, but it isn't. If you read any of the Israeli newspapers (and most of them are avaialble online in English) you will see that the latest Lebanon venture is viewed as an unmitigated disaster in Israel. Conversely, it is viewed as a shining success for Hezbollah--an irregular group of poorly equiped partisans handily defeating the regions reigning superpower backed by the world's real superpower, the U.S.
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Why do people say Israel was defeated by Hezbollah. Lebanon's land was taken, people massacred, economy was crippled, and they had no counter attack. Hezbollah beat the spread but I wouldn't say they defeated Israel.
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well the article is deceptive, too (Score:5, Interesting)
What the article actually says about 'hacking' Israeli military radio communications is merely this:
Using technology most likely supplied by Iran, special Hezbollah teams monitored the constantly changing radio frequencies of Israeli troops on the ground. That gave guerrillas a picture of Israeli movements, casualty reports and supply routes.
So what precisely did Hezbollah do? Sounds like they merely verified that there was radio traffic on certain frequencies, and that it came from Israeli units, and then they were able to do a little direction-finding on it to verify where it came from. Look, imam! Funky radio traffic in the Bekaa valley that sounds like the usual gibberish exchanged between Israeli armor and base -- I'll bet there are Israeli tanks on Route such-and-such!
Well, gosh, big deal. Any amateur could do as much as easily. It's not right brilliantly clever to deduce when you get a lot of chatter on military frequencies in a certain neighborhood that there are military operations afoot in it. I mean, Hezbollah probably got as good or better "intelligence" about Israeli movements just by taking reports of survivors who counted the number of tanks that rolled over them.
Did Hezbollah actually decrypt communications, which would be an intelligence coup? Your logic argues pretty persuasively that they did not, because if they had they would have kept it a deep dark secret. In fact, they would have done their best to avoid drawing attention to their radio-interception program, lest it start the Israelis thinking. They -- or rather their Iranian paymasters -- would not have countenanced boasting about the operation to a damn fool journalist who would embellish it with wild speculation about 'hacking' secret Israeli radio messages.
Nor does the article actually manage to get anyone who might have known to say otherwise. It merely attempts to imply that they might have said it, or something like it. Hence statements like this:
The official refused to detail how Hezbollah was able to intercept and decipher Israeli transmissions.
A nice example of the old 'begging the question' fallacy, such as in the question 'Have you stopped beating your wife yet?' Maybe the official refused to "detail" how Hezbollah was able to decipher Israeli transmissions because, in fact, they weren't able to.
Or this:
But a former Israeli general, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah's ability to secretly hack into military transmissions had "disastrous" consequences for the Israeli offensive.
"Israel's military leaders clearly underestimated the enemy and this is just one example," he said.
Hmmm....wait a minute, the direct quote only says the military leader underestimated Hezbollah. And what's the mysterious 'this' to which the general refers, which is an example of the underestimation? Interception and radio direction-finding? Or actual decryption? We don't know. The journalist implies, in the previous sentence, that 'this' means 'hacking' into military transmissions, and that this means interception and decryption. But does it?
If the anonymous general were willing to be quoted saying quite plainly: "Ayup, Hezbollah decrypted our most secret communications, damn 'em," then you can bet your last dollar the journalist would have used that very juicy quote. The fact that he didn't use that quote, or one like it, means he couldn't get it. And I'm sure he tried very hard, with all the artful questions he could. The general just wasn't willing to say those words. Because, almost surely, they would have been false.
In short, I think the odds are good that this is just another journalist whoring for Hezbollah, 'cause it makes a scary exciting man-bites-dog story.
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Also, Hezbollah had the cell phone numbers of the Israeli commanders. That was a huge breach of security by Israeli
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That's their primary moral boosting? Not the idea of protecting their nation against invasion? I suppose the vast majority of Lebanese civilians supported Hezbollah because they were mesmerized by it's boasting?
Re:The Real News (Score:4, Interesting)
The most likely explanation then would be that Israel had already figured out their communications had been compromised, and that Hezbollah in turn figured out what Israel figured out. At that point the best thing to do is to make the shared knowledge public for PR and morale purposes.
Hezbollah may not be a regular army, but they showed enough savy and sophistication during the conflict that I doubt they would give up the advantage of being able to hear Israel's communication.
For instance during World War II, even after the allies had broken a German code or devised a method to figure out that day's cipher string, they would still go about their routine of acting like they didn't know what the Germans were going to do.
Yes, I remember this in the Pacific too, with a carrier battle (Midway I think) where we knew from intercepted communications exactly where the Japanese fleet was, but we first flew a recon plane near enough to the fleet to be seen so it would appear as if we just "accidentally" ran into them in the middle of the ocean. We sacrificed some element of surprise to maintain the illusion that their codes were secure.
Also there were U.S. codes that were compromised by the Japanese, but in this case we knew it. We used these codes to send messages we wanted the Japanese intercept and read, and would gauge their reactions in messages we intercepted from them to improve our intelligence.
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I believe I once saw on the History Channel someone who said that even though they k
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Must_Be_Cra
Re:I think it may be several things (Score:4, Informative)
The arab Shia are the largest ethnic/religious group in Lebanon, at 30% (if you break it down by religion only, the Christians are larger, although there are many different, and sometimes conflicting, Christian sects). Hezbollah is their largest *political party*, which has a private militia that is more powerful than the Lebanese army (largely thanks to Iran and Syria's generosity, but also thanks to extensive training in fighting the Israeli army since the early 80's). The next largest political party, Amal, doesn't have near their level of support. Of course, don't think too mildly of Amal, either -- they fought Israel just as hard, even during this war, although they don't have Hezbollah's resources. Hezbollah is not only a major political party, but is the country's second largest employer, mostly for its network of government services that it provided to areas that the Lebanese government was either unable to or unwilling to provide to -- schools, hospitals, etc. Public service activism is one of the main ways that the party wins support, even down to the local level. I saw a documentary recently where one Hezbollah woman talked about an initiative she started in which Hezbollah families would stock medical supplies in their homes. Whenever anyone was injured, they could come and get treated for free, so that even if the hospitals were destroyed or taken over, people could get care. By doing things like this, addition to helping their own people, they rally support for Hezbollah at the same time.
Hezbollah has a very tight military discipline. They've been using what's termed "fourth generation warfare" [sfgate.com] by US military analysts. It combines classic guerella tactics with modern weaponry and a unique "peer to peer" communications structure. Weaponry is buried until used, then restored immediately, always in numerous, small caches, making it incredibly difficult to destroy. Local cells operate in their hometowns or other supportive territory, and are able to pick and choose targets as will. Groups communicate with their neighbors to exchange intelligence information; critical information is sent through hardened channels, sometimes even through physical runners. Overall strategy and reserves are controlled by Hezbollah itself. In the 2006 conflict with Israel, the army was bogged down in dealing with the local cells, in their supportive terrain.
Contrary to popular myth, Hezbollah (unlike Hamas and the other Palestinian groups) prefers not to operate around civilians [salon.com]. Not for a concern for the civilians' safety -- they'll confiscate buildings to use as shooting positions if needed, whether their owners like it or not -- but for their own safety. Hamas operates openly as a sign of pride and defiance. However, by doing that, it only takes a tiny handful of defectors to point out to Israel where they are and what they're doing. Hezbollah, on the other hand, prefers to operate in areas where nobody is around to reduce the risk of being exposed by defectors.
As we saw in the last conflict, they're a very effective military, and it's a big question mark on how to deal with them. It's almost funny how the major Arab powers were defeated one after another, yet this tiny band was blowing up warships and taking out hundreds of Merkavas, in addition to maintaining a steady rain of over 100 Katyushas per day throughout the entire conflict. And now their popularity is soaring -- not just in other countries, but even in Lebanon, where they started the conflict. Check out these polls [csmonitor.com]. Check out this [salon.com] as well.
Stupidest propaganda BS on slashdot yet (Score:4, Informative)
What the hell is this youtube video then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aur_DmTIw70 [youtube.com]
And this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68yOJVQA51E [youtube.com]
I'm calling BS. Take your propaganda off of slashdot - I know how to use google!
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Who's spreading propaganda?
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I'm calling BS. Take your propaganda off of slashdot - I know how to use google!
Footage from (apparently) Israeli military cameras that is so low rez that it is barely discernable?
Interspered with text telling us what to think?
Who do you think made those videos? Israeli military video footage doesn't just appear on the net by itself. The only propaganda I see here is your post and the claims in those dubious videos. On the other hand, the OP makes a plausible and
Re:I think it may be several things (Score:5, Interesting)
> second largest employer, mostly for its network of government services that it
> provided to areas that the Lebanese government was either unable to or unwilling
> to provide to -- schools, hospitals, etc. Public service activism is one of the
> main ways that the party wins support, even down to the local level. I saw a
Yes, but it's Iranian money; Hezbollah is basically an Iranian shell company. One could argue that they've bought loyalty with this money. But there's evidence that some of this loyalty has been frayed by anger at the pointless destruction that Nasrallah's group instigated.
There's also anecdotal reports about people who were ordered to stay put in southern Lebanese towns by Hezbollah gunmen, apparently to provide more human shields.
> Contrary to popular myth, Hezbollah (unlike Hamas and the other Palestinian
> groups) prefers not to operate around civilians. Not for a concern for the
> civilians' safety -- they'll confiscate buildings to use as shooting positions
> if needed, whether their owners like it or not -- but for their own
> safety. Hamas operates openly as a sign of pride and defiance. However, by
> doing that, it only takes a tiny handful of defectors to point out to Israel
> where they are and what they're doing. Hezbollah, on the other hand, prefers to
> operate in areas where nobody is around to reduce the risk of being exposed by
> defectors.
This may be true but many Hez fighters nonetheless operated extensively around civilians, sometimes in the same building but more often near civilian-occupied structures.
> As we saw in the last conflict, they're a very effective military, and it's a
> big question mark on how to deal with them. It's almost funny how the major
> Arab powers were defeated one after another, yet this tiny band was blowing up
> warships and taking out hundreds of Merkavas, in addition to maintaining a
> steady rain of over 100 Katyushas per day throughout the entire conflict. And
> now their popularity is soaring -- not just in other countries, but even in
> Lebanon, where they started the conflict. Check out these polls. Check out this
> as well.
As stated previously, there is also a lot of anger at Hezbollah for starting the conflict which wrecked people's homes across the south as well as parts of Beirut and set the country back many years in its economic development. Hezbollah has resorted to paying off returning families with $10K grants and crowing about its victory, while opposition editorialists have denounced Hezbollah for their reckless adventure.
Hezbollah certainly did not take out "hundreds of Merkavas"; I believe the number is more like 13, and the IDF is claiming that the Merkavas actually performed very well--probably would have done even better without this communications hacking disaster, and no doubt they have a lot more incentive now to get off their duffs and install the Trophy system (reported on
Given 4-5 more weeks, Israel would undoubtedly have degraded Hezbollah significantly enough that it would not be a threat again for a long time. Note how after claiming he would never cease fire, Nasrallah hypocritically sued for a cease-fire, and Israel's stupid government caved to U.S. pressure to call it off just when they were finally winning.
Privately, the Iranians are said to consider this war a disaster bo
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Which war were you watching? The one I was watching had a bunch of right wing Israeli politicians in an unstable situation looking for an excuse to go to war and boost their popularity - but it backfired and turned into a month long recruiting drive for Hizbollah paid for by Israel and the USA - making both Israel and the USA look bad. The USA was left in the situation of paying for a lot of weapons, having no say in
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> they want you to see, with the slant that they want it to have.
Hm, I don't watch TV but I do read a lot. The Israeli army, especially the reservists, has had its budgets cut a lot in recent years, and its equipment is old. There's a famous report of some reservists obtaining new backpacks from a wealthy American relative because the IDF expected them to go with whatever they had. The tanks were also running outda
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"Tiny band": estimated 3,000 regulars + 10,000 reserves. Not exactly "tiny" by Middle Eastern standards
"hundreds of merkava tanks": 14 [wikipedia.org]
"blowing up warships": one ship was damaged and towed for repairs. Hardly blown up, definitely not in the plural
I must congratulate you on managing to compress so many lies into a singe sentence....
Re:I think it may be several things (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't trying to exterminate us, they are conducting a war against us. Just like ANY war, one of the ways to end it is diplomatically. The war they are conducting has goals that they'd like to achieve, and only the most ignorant would think that they want to simply exterminate us.
I don't think that the average American would feel that our country has lost any respect at all if we tried to figure out what is pissing those people off so much, and figured out how to address that problem to remove their reason to fight. It's the only way any lasting peace will be achieved.
We could also do it your way and just kill them all. It's certainly a lot easier, since it doesn't require any of us to understand anything. We don't even have to vote. Plus, it makes great TV for Fox to play.
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I don't think that the average American would feel that our country has lost any respect at all if we tried to figure out what is pissing those people off so much, and figured out how to address that problem to remove their reason to fight. It's the only way any lasting peace will be achieved.
We alrea
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Look, I'm not a Muslim apoligist. I'm both an American and a born-again Jesus freak, and I do not want to live under Islamic government. But history is what it is, and you're painting with too broad a brush.
And woe to us if we go with genocide. Yeah, we'd win the war (at least for a few years). But we'd lose... I guess this is overstating it slightly, but we'd lose our humanity. Or at least somethi
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I give you:
Frequency hopping? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Frequency hopping? (Score:5, Interesting)
FH is an Electronic Counter Countermeasures (ECCM) measure. It is intended to make the radios harder to jam (jammer needs to transmit on a wide band of frequencies in stead of a single frequency) and harder to locate through direction finding.
Communications security (COMSEC) is provided by a symmetric encryption module on the radios. FH/ECCM is emphatically NOT a substitute for encryption.
The article did not come right out and say that the encryption was broken. It is not unknown, especially in a time-critical situation such as a firefight, for users to switch the encryption off if they are having difficulty talking to another unit. The thought is that some communications, even non-secure, is better than nothing in the heat of the moment.
The more likely way an enemy gets into the radio net is to capture a keyed radio, even worse if they get a crypto fill device too. Reacting to such a compromise is a critical skill set for the signal personnel in a combat unit.
-"Pro Patria Vigilans"
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My personal belief is no transmissio
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Of course with the data being en
According to Hizbollah officials (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they haven't really (Score:2, Interesting)
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If that's not the case, then someone in Hezbollah should feel really, really dumb now.
If you have access to your enemy's communications, the absolute last thing you would ever want to do is tell your enemy that you know what they're saying.
Of course, now the Israelis have to figure out whether the st
Re:Maybe they haven't really (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, but thats not the real stupidity. It sounds like Hezbollah just admitted to a DMCA violation!!! So I'm a bit skeptical of this information. I think it could just be the beggining of a brillant new offensive against Hezbollah. Next we'll see stories of Hezbollah leading massive piracy operations. Then its on, bitch! Dealing with Bush may not be a big deal, but sending the legions of Disney, Sony, WB, etc lawyers after them is another thing all together!
Thats REAL terrorisim! If this comes to pass I may actually feel sorry for them.
Sorry probably a bad attempt at a joke
Ouch (Score:3, Interesting)
The US is revamping their radio communications (Score:2)
This will, perhaps, accelerate the push for that, but it's already been in the works for a long time.
Also nothing's saying that the US still uses
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Network Centric Operations [wikipedia.org] are all the rage... which goes along with what you said above. What happends when a patrol is intercepted and the enemy get their hands on your PDA/Radio. Can they then see all your movements and listen to your comms until the key is changed? (24Hrs?) Cou
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Re:Ouch (Score:5, Interesting)
It is far more likely that some ass hat of a soldier left a radio, a list of channels and codes, and/or other secret information relating to communication someplace available to the enemy.
When faced with two explanations, one taking an amazing amount of skill and luck, and the other taking a severe amount of incompetence... go with incompetence.
-Rick
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A completely plausible explanation however, I have never heard of the Israeli regulars leaving bodies behind.
-Rick
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You just load new software and it's a whole different beast. Basically anything you could want to do with a radio you can. Obviously there are hardware limitations (max hoprate, available memory, etc.) but generally you could turn your SDR into a toaster if you wanted.
I thought the Israelis were sharper than that (Score:5, Funny)
They should have used the New Testament Bible Code, not the Old Testament Bible Code.
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The war is over, that's why (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The war is over, that's why (Score:5, Insightful)
Traditionally a conflict is over with the other side is subdued to the point they have no choice but to lay down arms. A cease fire just means they'll stop shooting while everyone re-arms. In this case, this is especially true. Nothing has been resolved long term.
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Article sounded suspiciously familiar (Score:4, Informative)
For those interested, here is the original article [atimes.com]. Compare for yourself the various comments.
Still a good reading and it explains why Hezbollah could say they had killed X number of troops or destroyed Y tanks before the Israeli military admitted to the losses. They were listening to the Israeli transmissions from the battlefield!
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As opposed to having X machine-gun militias or Y bazzoka militias reporting sucessfull application of ammo to target?
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A lil' further back... no, less... lil' more... (Score:2)
I figured they had militants near enough to see what was going on through binoculars (therefore far enough away to avoid getting hit) telling them by radio where to aim and what they hit.
Retro-tech espionage... maybe I underestimated their techies.
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Perhaps being a Slashdotter means you're a bit overeager to cry 'dupe'...
Propaganda? (Score:3, Insightful)
If Hezbollah actually had cracked Israeli radio codes why would they admit it? Isn't that just giving information to the other side?
The only purpose in saying this is to boost morale and cause doubt for the opposition. Neither of those requires actually breaking a code and Hezbollah is known for making boasts without anything to back it up.
Until their is actual evidence, or at least a quote from a non-anonymous Israeli military official, I don't see why I should believe this.
Just because it's on the internet, doesn't make it true.
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I think it's foolish when someone comes to victory via clandestine techniques to come out and admit how they did what they did. The only think it helps to do is give the opposition an opportunity to close another breech in their defenses.
Diebold question (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Would matter since, as good Muslims, they wouldn't be able to use the contents anyway. In fact, even if they did crack the MB, they should have left everything there in the hope that the Israelis would both celebrate too much to be effective, and screw their chances of going to the Islam Paradise -- which may have women (Horus), but no wine or song.
... This week in the news... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now we have weekly Iran stories... There is no real evidence ever... For example there was this wonderful "Iran plans on executing girl for defending herself from rape" story... Completely fake, no known source, but yet got the internet all up in arms
Lack of Implementation (Score:2, Informative)
When I was in the military our base frequency changed everyday and our ciphers changed on a regular basis weekly and sometimes daily.
If they were exercising proper procedures the only way I think it could have happened is if they stole an ANPASS(If I remember the name correctly). It includes all the frequencies and ciphers that you would need. T
Overconfidence leads to sloppiness (Score:2)
I don't think it's hard to imagine that at least at the outset of the conflict, the Israeli soldiers might have gone into the conflict with a very distorted idea of the enemy; one that was incapable of doing anything more than listening to the latest propaganda on a 20-year-old shortwave set and cleaning their AK-47.
Thus, like the Germans with their Enigma, they got lax on the proce
Re: (Score:2)
I do not know if this is considered a critical issue because reliability and simplicity have a higher priority and people on the ground just have to take in account th
So no "hack" here (Score:2)
This is proof that... (Score:2)
Wait... they have computers now? (Score:2)
One thing you can count on... (Score:3, Insightful)
This matters why? (Score:4, Funny)
"We've killed everyone in the area, moving on to the next village."
"They are falling back in a northernly direction, sending missile salvos 1, 2, and 3 miles ahead of our mechanized division to thin out the runners and reduce resistance as we proceed."
"Good hit. They didn't have a chance."
Possible ideas... (Score:2, Informative)
could have occured (ranked from unlikely to likely)
Incidentally, this is my opinion and not fact so please do not take this out of context.
1) Israel was using an unsecure net (i.e. plaintext, single channel) - This is probably unlikely because as a fighting force, the Israelis are among
the best, specifically in the areas of tactical security.
BzztBzztBongDong.Propoganda machine in full effect (Score:2)
It's hard to trust what either side is saying when so much is at stake. The Hezbollah official who was showing off about their ca
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
But they didn't get their asses kicked. That is what has shaken Israel to the core.
Re: (Score:2)
You better stop buying oil too.
Re:You stoooopid! (Score:4, Insightful)
I visited Israel from the US on August 18, only 5 days after the cease-fire began. The northern part of the country was devoid of tourists, but the Israelis were not afraid at all, and were thrilled to see us. We saw rocket damage across the north, and Israeli tanks coming back from Lebanon. We also saw many off-duty 20 year old soldiers (male and female) at McDonalds with their M-16s. All were interesting sites that would scare the crap out of Americans. The Israelis are happy to have a soldier nearby, and the soldiers are required to carry their weapon at all times as long they are on active duty.
Seeing the real Israel gave me perspective that is not present in America. People here say "How you can Israel bomb innocent civilians?" Those people haven't seen who they are fighting against. The palestinians and arabs do not care about their land. They do not care about their people. They do not care about other people.
Israelis do care about the Palestinians... at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, which is run by Israel, 40% of patients are palestinian. Palestinians get FREE health care, whereas Israeli citizens do not. All nurses in the hospital are required to be bilingual in hebrew and arabic.
The palestinians do not want their own land, they dont want to do anything with the land they have. And, yes they do stand on top of their rubble and shout "we won". Because if they're not actually fighting for land or rights, then the battle itself is their victory.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, obviously.
Personally, I love how the arabs can stand on the pile of rubble that used to be their infrastructure and shout "we won!"
Um... Notice how very few Israelis are actually disagreeing with that assesment? Victory isn't making piles of rubble. If you look at the larger picture, this was a victory for Hezbollah without a doubt.
The Israeli military is supposed to be one of the best in the world. They've fought a number of nations around them a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Both sides claim victory [npr.org]
Ragtag militia gets 100 Million dollars a year from Iran [cbsnews.com]
Ragtag militia has advanced wire-guided anti-tank missles [jamestown.org]
Ragtag militia has advanced anti-ship missles [bbc.co.uk]
Ragtag mi [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In short: Did Israel achieve any of it objectives in the war? Has it gained ground or lost ground, politically, economically, militarily?