Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March
rce.ir
rce.ir
I can't read it, I'm working my way through the google translation and just starting, so maybe it's all "bad" stuff, but to be honest, I hope iranians can shed some light on what our government is doing - the US government itself certainly isn't going to help with that.
Thus it helps to be alert when popping into such sites.
If I'm both curious and suspicious (so in my most tin-hatish of moods) I fire up a virtualbox instance with a clean image, look at the site, and then delete that virtual machine image. That seems to also have an unintended prophylactic effect since virus investigators like to run viruses in VMs so malicious payloads don't fire if they detect they are running in a VM (at least according to the F-secure blog).
But either way, my point was that just visiting a site that wants to get you is a risk, whether or not you think you are protected.
NB: I am not disagreeing with you I am just curious to look at some of the recent compression vulnerabilities.
Note there have been various fixes, and you can often tell when you see one because you get a 'broken image' icon rather than a picture and an new friend. The compressed Javascript exploits were primarily tied to pdfs apparently (you can search for 'compressed js exploit') and then look for "gif decoder exploit" and of course the whole cross site scripting thing which when you're building a web site to compromise people its not a 'bug' that it has a cross site exploit vulnerability per se :-)
Basically anything that 'decompresses' is effectively a data driven computation engine where the bad guys can feed an arbitrary stream of data into that engine to make it do unexpected things. Whether it was the font exploits in Stuxnet and elsewhere or pdf exploits or jpeg exploits. Sadly it has been a target rich environment in the past.
But the idea of somehow avoiding ever encountering a certain point of view on the global internet is even more stupid.
It's not enough to get you a visit from the feds or anything, but it's almost certain that any competent intelligence agency is storing anything that touches that website. Whoever posted it likely has links in their social graph to very high value targets.
It makes me wonder, if one were to inject an 0x0 iframe with this site on a decently trafficked page (a couple hundred visitors per day) that tends to attract a niche, one could potentially create more noise?
If we've reached the point of self censoring behaviour, then we're definitely in the Panopticon.
The harder it becomes to break out of our filter bubbles, the more foreigners will look alien, strange and scary :(
Unless you want to argue that Snowden intentionally leaked the PRISM slides so that society would be intimidated by the governments reach, thus giving way to society censoring itself without them having to publicly punish people that were guilty of thought crimes. But that's getting into Alex Jones territory.
I disagree, with the government having the 'you're with us or against us' polarizing attitude since 9/11 along with Gitmo and an official kill list I think the U.S. gov't is pretty intimidating for anyone who doesn't fall into line.
Just look at what happened in Boston. A whole city shut down, house to house searches, an unprecedented reaction in the west for a bombing. No where else has that kind of reaction been seen, even in the UK when the IRA was blowing shit up, at no time was a curfew imposed and houses illegally searched by a militarised police.
The US is an incredibly intimidating place at times.
Yes after 9/11 the government has a "your with us or your against us" attitude, promoted by Bush. However, your examples of Gitmo and kill lists are not evidence that this has continued. Those two examples only pertain to the ongoing war effort, not an intimidation campaign aimed at the average citizen, and the Americans that were involved were in the current warzone, not shipped off to Gitmo from the US.
I would address the Boston situation, but I don't think it is relevant. Sure shutting down the city is intimidating, but so is any other active shooter situation like a school shooting. You might feel intimidated by the police presence but ultimately the police are not focused on you.
But more to the point, of course the US is an intimidating place at times, everywhere is, but the key is that the intimidation is not focused on citizen self-censorship, which I think is the key to saying that we live in an Orwellian society.
Whether or not the US is an intimidating place, or debates about the validity of the Boston searches and curfew is a different discussion. They are not forms of intimidation aimed at self-censorship, and thus not valid reasons that we should assume that we live in an Orwellian surveillance state.
If you would like to have a debate about the role, or non-role of self-censorship in an Orwellian society, and you believe that some other form of intimidation is a valid criteria then I am all ears, but the discussion isn't about intimidation in general, only intimidation whose ultimate goal is self-censorship.
This is exactly what is wrong. As long as these massive injustices don't affect the 'average' middle class unit it's all ok. As long as the military police thrashing through your house on their latest manhunt aren't actually after you, that's ok. It all seems pretty Orwellian to me, right down to the citizens actually justifying it all.
Anyway to be more on point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper-spray_incident
This seems pretty intimidating to me. It would certainly make me think twice about attending even the most peaceful of protests. Pepper spray and tazing is a common response to people objecting to the status quo. Hell, if you want to protest a political rally you have to actually go to a 'free speech zone', if that isn't Orwellian enough for you I don't know what is. Than again, the 'average' citizen probably is ok with a two party 'choice' and so doesn't need free speech.
And then you have Obama's HR347 'anti protest' bill which could potentially be used to lock people up for many years for protesting in an area which the Secret Service/DHS etc. has secretly declared a heightened area of security.
It's really frightening how much potential leeway there currently is for arbitrarily locking U.S. citizens up. All these loosely defined laws are sitting around just waiting for someone to come in and abuse them. While things are quiet and everyone is behaving it all seems ok, but as soon as there is a bit of trouble, another Occupy protest for example it will be a different story.
Watch how you see your right to due process being eroded away next, it's already not needed when hunting down suspects on foreign soil. You watch as language is changed, terms subtly augmented to make it ok to execute US citizens with a drone - you know, for your protection. Maybe you, the average citizen, aren't intimidated yet, but perhaps tomorrow you might be.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-08/obama-s-drone-attac... http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-usa-security-dr...
Furthermore I actually disagree that self censorship is the key component of an Orwellian society. I think surveillance itself is the key component. Reading the interpretation below I challenge you to deny that the US and many other governments aren't well on their way to the dystopia described by Orwell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian#Meanings
Police charging through your house without permission whist you sit back and say 'they are just doing their job' is the epitome of an Orwellian society.
So all that changed so far is that everyone starts behaving or acting keeping in mind that they are watched. Self censoring is very powerful. It would be interesting to see the rate in filter hits NSA gets on "terrorist-y" keywords before vs after the leaks. That would indicate the amount of self-censoring. We'll never see those statistics anytime soon, but someone is seeing it. Wonder what they are thinking or how they are interpreting this.
The 'it doesn't really matter what they know about me' attitude misses the whole point. The point is, it really matters that they are collecting data on citizens. The Founding Fathers would be disappointed to know that apathy was the downfall of their vision.
And where will you flee to? What kind of life do you think you'll have in a world where America sets the standard and all other governments follow suit? Citizens around the world shrugging and finding ways to tollerate the new paradigm whilst still living as comfortably as possible, because being monitored doesn't affect them.
I've repeatedly asked for advice on HN in terms of what I can actually _do_ to improve the situation. I also recently posted a long rant asking for personal advice on leaving the country so as to not provide indirect support to what's going on [1]. If you have any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it.
I was really puzzled about what to do, because the Founding Fathers would NOT put up with this shit. Then I realized the key difference. The Founding Fathers started the American Revolution _because they could win_. They didn't worship freedom like some kind of religion. They were not self-sacrificial. They were trying to make their lives better. They were egoists.
What can I do, that has any remote chance of success? I can't think of anything. A revolution today would be a huge disaster, not that I'm even capable of starting one. All I can do is keep advocating a bit, and wait it out, and hope it gets better. To cease producing and go on strike at this point would not make any difference, except to be self-sacrificial.
If you have any suggestions, please let me know. However, I don't think suggestions like "Call your Congressman" are viable, and that's what I often get.
If we could get all the productive people in the country to refuse to put up with this shit and go on strike, we could do something. If everyone in the NSA and the military had the scruples and moral principles of Snowden, we could end this shit overnight. But there is too little agreement. Such a strike will not happen, and if it did, whatever these people came up with next would probably be much worse than what we have now.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=QFgl37XVMgSe59KGmzDlnj (though I don't recommend you waste your time reading it)
Let the downvoting begin. What a bunch of losers.
What are the consequences for our society of us fearing to click on links that they may turn out to be foreign propaganda?
Which is really, really sad. It's come to this, where we have to be afraid of drivebys on websites just because they may be honeypots for the US government, or because they might get all of us on some surveillance list.
When is it going to stop?
People like Snowden didnt ruin their lifes so you can avoid clicking links. For fucks sake, the least you can do is grow a pair of balls and exercise your god damn given freedom to do as you wish, stand up.
1) You're not going to be added to "a list" because you clicked a link on hacker news. Remember that the NSA employs some of the smartest people in the world. Would it be meaningful to add a bunch of curious silicon valleyists to a list of "possible terrorists"? Probably not.
2) If you think that an aircraft that is anything bigger than a small pigeon could get anywhere near a major airport without getting itself a nice escort, then you're nuts.
Here is a map of the airspace near JFK: http://www.aeroplanner.com/notams/airspace.cfm?apt=jfk
This is all "Class b" or "bravo" airspace. It's all heavily controlled, heavily monitored with radar, and you have to ask permission to enter it.
It's incredibly unlikely that there was a "drone" in bravo airspace. Possibly a UAV, definitely not the boogey man Iranians.
3) This website doesn't even say anything. It's some pictures that could have easily been photoshopped together. Google translate isn't giving me anything interesting, and unless HN is a LOT more diverse than I realized, you're all going nuts over a couple of grainy photos.
Finally, here is what the drone that Iran supposedly "captured" last year looks like: http://i.imgur.com/ALveZWi.jpg
It isn't a toy. It's huge. There is no way that is getting anywhere near a RADAR without everybody knowing about it. Yes, it is [possibly...meant to be, rumored to be] stealth. That doesn't mean it's going to go undetected into a major airport like that.
Relax. Go have a beer.
2. Based on commentary from native Persian speakers on this thread, it would appear that no one is claiming that the drone was remotely piloted by Iranians into US Airspace, but rather the one that was shot down in Iran several months ago (confirmed by the US Government) had these photos on it.
3. See above, there are at least 2 Persian speakers on this thread. HN is a LOT more diverse than you realize.
If this is true it means the Iranians compromised the encryption on the UAV's drive, which would be seriously not good.
However, milspec != NSA, and its highly likely the Russians would help the Iranians in such an endeavor in exchange for intelligence sharing.
What exactly is "milspec"? I was under the impression that military security standards in the US _are_ produced by the NSA.
> highly likely the Russians would help the Iranians in such an endeavor in exchange for intelligence sharing.
I must be missing something... yes, but what do Russians have to do with it? I thought this was a US drone captured by Iranians. Genuine question here.
It's a good question about the Russians. The ties between Russia and Iran are much tighter than most in the US realize, especially when it comes to national security, and particularly with regard to US-related issues. If we used industrial grade crypto on a system, it would be in line with past behaviors for the Russians to help the Iranians with it.
Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>.
> for example a near-real-time flight application.
Wait, why do you say such a system wouldn't use NSA-grade encryption?
Primarily latency. Now, ideally you'd like the entire subsystem moved off disk into volatile memory, but for some things you're going to have to read from disk. I can imagine cases where that wouldn't be easily feasible if the drive had NSA crypto.
"Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>."
Right, but its more than that in the case of the Iranians. The Russians have a long and documented history of assistance to the Iranians and the Syrians.
I'm not sure I follow. For some things you're going to have to _write_ to disk... like captured video. (I wouldn't consider that to be the "real-time" part of the software, though.) And you might have to read from disk occasionally... maybe you have map information stored there... but that probably doesn't need to be real-time. Can you tell me an example where you would need to read from disk in real-time? (Which I think should anyway be impossible, regardless of whether or not heavy crypto is being used.)
> The Russians have a long and documented history of assistance to the Iranians and the Syrians.
Yeah, very true, I have noticed that, too.
Much like the Mars rovers, the navigation system is loaded in a modular fashion, with complex algorithms for each scenario loaded on the fly. So for example, imagine a UAV goes into a stall. Likely the aircraft needs a whole new set of algorithms to recover. It's very likely I this case you'd need low latency disk reads. Now again, this is just a guess based upon my experience with similar systems. I've never developed a UAV system.
Well then, you're exactly the kind of person we need to stop lurking and start participating, so welcome aboard. But yeah, I totally understand you.
> this is just a guess based upon my experience with similar systems
You mean planetary rovers? If not, can you be more specific? I realize it's not necessarily wise to divulge too much industrial information. I actually have worked on UAVs... not to the point that I can say the scenario you're presenting is incorrect (I wasn't involved in that kind of stuff), but I don't think it's very plausible. I could see that strategy being more reasonable on a super memory-constrained device where the system is radiation hardened, like space equipment. I would think for a normal UAV, you'd just keep all the code (algorithms) you might need in memory.
I'm not convinced this shows anything at all. But even if it did, remember, the Iranian government has a history of photoshopping images for propaganda purposes. See e.g. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/in-an-iranian-im...
Agree with OP. Very little here. Keep calm and carry on.
EDIT: Turns out they're claiming these were pulled off the RQ-170 Sentinel that crash landed in Iran. If that's true, it would mean the drive was salvaged and decrypted, which is a potentially big deal.
I'm reasonably sure I've got several "aircraft" in my shed which I could easily use to overfly "a major airport" if I chose to do so.
This one, for example, is at least medium or large pidgeon sized (610mm wingspan): http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigiain/5228554566/ - the flight in that video was around 2.5km from the intersection of the runways at Sydney Airport. That plane (with the camera on board) can fly for ~23 minutes doing 20m/s. That'd give me a comfortable 10mins loiter time over the airport while still being comfortably able to retrieve the camera and it's SD card.
Note - that's barely more that $100 worth of stuff, it's less than 150g all up flying weight, and it's got so little metal in it that I'd be astounded if the regular airport radar could distinguish it under ideal conditions, never mind while it's only a few tens of meters up and buried in the ground clutter.
Note2 - that plane would require retrieval to get the images back, someone actually interested in getting airport pictures without getting caught could use a slightly larger plane carrying a video transmitter sending pictures, never intending to get the plane back (ideally, I guess, ditching the plane at sea to avoid anyone seeing it - a hollow balsa/film construction that'd sink easily might be better than a foam "floating" construction.)
Note3 - that plane as it's configured now isn't flyable at 2.5km range, but there's lots of hobbyists who've worked around the problems there.
That person is basically claiming that the UAV was at one point flown over JFK airport at some previous time before the US moved the UAV to the middle east.
If it did, you're already on that list.
Also, there's some censored text in the upper left. I suspect that's the date and time.
My guess is these pictures were lifted from promotional material like the "MicroSTAR" sheet just below it.
The only context provided so far is that LA Times article talking about a sighting of an "unmanned aircraft or drone" near JFK in March, with (AFAICT) no connection with this forum post at all, except one or more of the posts in that thread also seem to mention JFK.
Is anyone actually taking this seriously? Do people not know that forums are full of bullshit the world over?
Edit: in fact, this person seems to be pushing these "Parastoo" self-published press releases rather hard, which themselves seem to be bullshit aimed at pressing members of the IAEA to publicly denounce Israel (while trumpeting their own hacker cred, of course). The only way anyone is ever going to see the threats in those releases is if they get eyes on them. There may be a story in chaining together these seemingly grandiose claims, but it's not in this random forum post of non-descript screenshots, and until I see evidence otherwise, I'm going to go ahead and assume this person is here to try and get "grassroots" attention on their self promotion.
Anyway, can someone (perhaps the original poster) explain what specifically is happening? :)
Recently has started making statements about hijacking drones: http://cryptome.org/2013/07/parastoo-uav-launch2.htm
TLDR: Iranian chap(s) have been on a hacking spree and seem to be honing in on what they like to target. In this case US drones over US skies/assets.
US drones over US skies
I'll just leave this here from Orwell's 1984:
In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs,
hovered for an instant like a bluebottle,
and darted away again with a curving flight.
It was the police patrol, snooping in people's windows.> According to the documents, CBP already appears to be flying drones well within the Southern and Northern US borders, and for a wide variety of non-border patrol reasons. What’s more — the agency is planning to increase its Predator drone fleet to 24 and its drone surveillance to 24 hours per day / 7 days per week by 2016.
There appear to be no privacy controls for citizens currently, but they may add them… eventually.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130705/17154023725/borde...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/customs-border-protect...
The FBI has very recently admitted to using them for domestic surveillance, but I don't think specifics were mentioned.
E.G., see here http://www.flickr.com/photos/denon/3563523851/
To give you a context, these poems are written by gnostic who believed they saw the real truth and they had no fear of dying because you can not never kill their souls. I assume any culture has this sort of things"
First poem:
We are stuck in a deep well of the bad thinking one Our message would not reach to you (God?) easily
Second (red) I have experienced a lot of pain during my life No pain is comparable to pain of Hijran( being far from God, "the one", etc)
Third (red) This is Arabic. I don't know Arabic. I can say it's part of Quran and it's referring to " thos who belive will be able to discove" or something like that.
Maybe someone else who speaks the language or someone who wants to try with Google Translate could help out.
What we have here is a forum by Iranian semi-military force "Basij". They bluff all the time and you never know what is truth. They have no shame in photoshoping and manipulating the truth.
I'm always fascinated by the way these people's minds seem to work! Reading his posts, this "DarkPassenger" fellow seems even crazier than our good HN friend losethos: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos
Back-story on the series of on-going hacks by Iranians against US entities/corporations: http://cryptome.org/2013/07/ir-hack-forum.htm
Drone sighting at JFK
I'm also okay if the NSA targets OP looking at his submission list.
Shame on you.
The first, dated four days ago (and the only I see one preceeding this), is a title making some sort of claim about Booz Hamilton based on a whois lookup. Not exactly a quality submission, but it has nothing to do with Iran or hacking.
The other three submissions are all about what seems to be some news he's stumbled on about hacking/reverse engineering claims from Iran.
Considering this is 'Hacker' news, you can understand why he might think we'd be interested in this. Of course, it would be better form for him to write up an article explaining the separation or link between these items rather than posting lots of direct evidence.
None of that means he should expect to have his privacy breached by a US intelligence agency, and frankly your support for that on the basis of such a flimsy characterisation is blood-chilling.
A lot of people seem to have become alarmed because they've seen persian text and heard that it's about hacking. That's equally chilling.
Is this all it takes?