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Comment by rkon | Hacker News Reader

This article might be worth reading if it included even a single shred of evidence to back up the author's ridiculous assumptions. Instead, what we got is "this must be what happened because it's the best thing a completely uninformed layman like myself can come up with."

The truth is that an Iranian cowboy caught it with a lasso, in case any of you were wondering.

Edit: Undeniable proof of this article's absurdity: "Even if that control signal is encrypted pattern recognition during many flights over four years would have given them enough information to break the code."

Because all you do is take a few encrypted flight control readings, put them into Code Breaker 2.0, then enjoy your brand new (previously owned) stealth drone, right?

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How do you know that the encryption scheme they were using wasn't vulnerable to replay attack?

No one is talking about replay attacks. The author said "break the code."

Well obviously the author is just speculating on how it could have been done.

My point is that it's not totally out of the question that Iran took hold of this drone via the LoS landing controls, if those landing controls are vulnerable to replay attack.

This whole post is just speculation. It happens to be interesting, which is cool, but I don't think anybody is making the claim that this author knows exactly what happened.

Replay attack is a class of encryption break. That counts.

(But I agree the original claim was pretty far out).

Because Siemens didn't build it? ;)

While I'm assuming they have strong encryption for remote control, isn't it possible that their system still could be susceptible to replay attacks?

I stopped reading at that line, also.

probably shouldn't look at porn on the drone control computer either...

Also consider that if they hacked the controls they'd be foolish to use the capability in peace time. That ace would be kept up the sleeve.

Peace? America hasn't been in peace for over a decade.

If you mean peace, specifically with Iran, I think that's a stretch. America is actively trying to take down Iran's government, flying spy planes in its air space and sending in viruses that damage its equipment. Meanwhile, Iran is funding terrorist organizations who target the West and trying to build a nuclear bomb. This is not peace.

It could be he meant "peace" as in, "not in a declared state of war". With which Iran, the US is not, as far as I am aware.

Wow, you are right. I just realized that we are in a cold war.

I'd like to read an analysis that draws parallels from the opposing ideologies in the current situation to the opposing ideologies of the Cold War.

In lisp it would look like:

     (compare-contrast
       (conflict '(ideology US) '(ideology USSR))
       (conflict '(ideology US) '(ideology Iran)))

So the USA is responsible for deploying Stuxnet? Do you have any actual evidence for this?

Why is it foolish? Perhaps their goal is prevent a conflict with US. The calculus being that, once there is a conflict they will take undue damage. So better prevent any conflict by sending a message that we are not defenseless.

Just think about it, there is so much news about this now, that any attack from US will face some internal opposition.

For all we know the plane was downed by the administration, to reduce the pressure from GOP's posturing of attack on Iran.

I usually don't make this kind of comments but, after reading the linked article and its comments (on the linked page) I was wondering if everybody suddenly reached absolute stupidity. Glad to see that we can still discuss rationally here at HN.

As rkon said, not worth reading. It is that stupid. Read only if you have some kind of fascination for human stupidity.

I only kept reading after that line to see if there were additional conjectures involving "reversing polarity" and/or "reconfiguring the shields through the sensor array."

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