DARPA Unveils Hack-Proof Drone:
The Pentagon's
Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA) unveiled a new drone built with secure software that
prevents the control and navigation of the aircraft from being hacked.
The program, called High Assurance Cyber Military Systems(HACMS), uses software designed to thwart cyber attacks.
It has been underway with DARPA for several years after originating at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Washington, said Kathleen Fischer, HACMS program manager for DARPA. "The software is designed to make sure a hacker cannot take over control of a UAS. The software is mathematically proven to be invulnerable to large classes of attack," Fisher said.
See the HACMS Open Catalog for access to publications and software that comprise the system, much of which is available as open source.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Kilo110 on Thursday May 22 2014, @11:57AM
Will we see this at the next pwn2own?
(Score: 2) by Woods on Thursday May 22 2014, @12:54PM
I was just thinking that. I forget who did it, but some company had released a major improvement to their DRM along with an article about how awesome it was, and within maybe a couple of hours, someone had released a crack for the DRM.
I cannot recall who or what it was, but I am sure someone here could name it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tynin on Thursday May 22 2014, @01:06PM
Ubisoft and their uber-DRM release back in 2010.
http://torrentfreak.com/ubisofts-uber-drm-cracked- within-a-day-100304/ [torrentfreak.com]
Of course, their are a few other similar examples. But this was cracked so fast, it made me wonder if it was an inside job with someone that knew the code but had moral issues with it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday May 22 2014, @07:47PM
Or perhaps we will see it at a press conference in Iran soon.
Seriously, I can't believe this wasn't built in from the start. First Alkaid managed to download video feeds from the drones, then Iran either took control of one, or duped it into (crash) landing.
I can't imagine why heads didn't roll at the first hint that these could be hijacked.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Rune of Doom on Thursday May 22 2014, @07:53PM
Yeah. The first thing I did upon reading the headline was giggle. To be fair though, the actual DARPA release is quite reasonable. I wonder if Dr. Fisher is headdesking it somewhere after reading how they presented her words and work.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday May 22 2014, @12:53PM
"The software is mathematically proven to be invulnerable to large classes of attack". Does that go for the implementation too?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 22 2014, @01:01PM
Absolutely.
You see.. going astray or going busted is still going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cornholed on Thursday May 22 2014, @01:03PM
Loosely translated, they probably started encrypting data transmissions [wired.com].
In 2008 Obama was not in favor of gay marriage and look what they did to him.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 22 2014, @01:41PM
Oh my God. You're right.
The NSA can build wiretaps into your USB ports, but the military contractors couldn't get encryption into drones until now. Jesus fucking Christ. Misplaced priorities and misallocated resources.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Thursday May 22 2014, @03:51PM
And presumably they're doing because the Iranians captured a US drone [wikipedia.org] by spoofing its GPS feed. They've had a couple of years to reverse-engineer and if I were them, I would be sharing all my tech data with my jihadi pals.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Thursday May 22 2014, @04:02PM
> If I were them, I would be sharing all my tech data with my jihadi pals.
The jihadis are sunni and Iran is shia. The jihadis won't even acknowledge that shias are muslims (kind of like how extremist born-again christians deny that catholics are christian, except they are about 100x bigger assholes about it). The chance of Iran co-operating with extremist sunnis is basically nil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 22 2014, @08:26PM
On the other hand, Iran is probably signing a deal with Russia for eight nuclear reactors [en.ria.ru]. I wonder what Russia gets in return, besides an alliance with a perpetual thorn in the US' side.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday May 22 2014, @09:54PM
Oil and access to the Middle East/India over land through a couple friendly 'stans (and of course Georgia now they've been put in their place).
(Score: 4, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Thursday May 22 2014, @03:54PM
> Loosely translated, they probably started encrypting data transmissions.
When software engineers talk about mathematical proof, they are referring to formal verification [wikipedia.org] which is a very difficult and thus expensive process so it rarely gets done for anything of significant complexity.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday May 22 2014, @07:59PM
Yes, but even more than that, formal verification is just a proof that the software conforms to the specifications, and says nothing about the hardware.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @10:56PM
The problem is, when journalistic sites with low standards, start loosely translating-
"The software is designed to make sure a hacker cannot take over control of a UAS. The software is mathematically proven to be invulnerable to large classes of attack,"
as
"DARPA Unveils Hack-Proof Drone".
Seriously, aren't we a more tech-savvy community than that? Please folks, let's raise our standards of actually using words related to cyber-security popularly. The NSA has been diseducating the masses for 10 years, and this sort of horseshit is seriously not helping fix the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 22 2014, @03:53PM
They really shouldn't forget the oldest hack, after all, it has been around longer then the oldest profession and still the most commonly successful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 22 2014, @01:06PM
requires no software and no antennas
anything else and it is only hack-proof until its not
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 22 2014, @08:30PM
Well, give me one of those drones and an axe, and we'll see whether it can be hacked. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Thursday May 22 2014, @01:13PM
Then it can be hacked.
(Score: 5, Funny) by hoochiecoochieman on Thursday May 22 2014, @01:47PM
The Titanic used to be sink-proof, too.
(Score: 5, Funny) by cellocgw on Thursday May 22 2014, @02:56PM
{quote}The Titanic used to be sink-proof, too.
It still is. Icebergs are outside the approved parameter space.
Physicist, cellist, former OTTer (1190) resume: https://app.box.com/witthoftresume
(Score: 4, Funny) by hoochiecoochieman on Thursday May 22 2014, @03:05PM
And it didn't sink. It was "upgraded" to submarine.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 22 2014, @04:02PM
Indeed. The probability that it will sink in the future is negligible.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @01:12AM
C'mon, guys...1,514 people died in that disaster--show some respect even if Hollywood does (not) to varying degrees [ A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958) [imdb.com] vs. TITANIC (1997) [imdb.com] ]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 22 2014, @03:00PM
seems this time around john connors dad got intercepted in time.