Iran Hacked GPS Signals To Capture U.S. Drone

[ via Information Week ] 16 Dec

Iran recently captured a CIA batwing stealth drone by spoofing the GPS signals it received, fooling the drone into thinking it was landing at its home base.

American RQ-170 Sentinel drone shot down by Iran on display

The Christian Science Monitor, broke that news Thursday, after interviewing an Iranian engineer who's been reviewing the systems of the captured RQ-170 Sentinel drone, which was downed by Iranian forces on December 4 near Kashmar, which is about 140 miles inside northeast Iran.

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the engineer told theMonitor. Indeed, numerous researchers have warned that GPS signals are relatively easy to spoof, given that the related signal broadcast by satellites is relatively weak. Accordingly, the Iranians focused on spoofing the GPS data being received by the drone.

To make the drone rely only on GPS, however, first the Iranians jammed the remote-control communications channel used to guide the drone from its control center. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain," said the engineer. Notably, it's also much easier than trying to crack the encrypted remote-control communications channel.

With the drone relying solely on GPS to determine its latitude, longitude, altitude, and velocity, the Iranians then broadcast carefully spoofed GPS coordinates, which allowed the drone to land at what it believed was its home base. In reality, it landed well inside Iranian borders. The altitude of the spoofed location was slightly different, however, which ended up denting the drone's underbelly, as can be seen in video footage released by Iran.

The revelations over Iran's GPS jamming capabilities mean that the country could be able to divert any GPS-guided missiles launched at targets inside its borders.

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Obama: We asked Iran to give us our drone back

[ via Yahoo News ] 12 Dec

Obama revealed the request for the return of the drone, which "fell" to earth in Iran recently, during a Monday White House news conference. 

"We've asked for it back," President Obama said of the spy plane, according to an Agence-France Press report. "We'll see how the Iranians respond. With respect to the drone inside of Iran, I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters that are classified," he added.

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Iran Will Not Return Downed American Drone

[ n p r ] 11 Dec

Iran will not return the downed American surveillance drone, RQ-170, captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday.

"No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country," Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard said in an interview on the state run TV.

However, Gen Salami refused to provide more details of Iran's claim to have captured the CIA-operated aircraft.

"A party that wins in an intelligence battle doesn't reveal its methods. We can't elaborate on the methods we employed to intercept, control, discover and bring down the pilotless plane."

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Iran Complains to UN over of U.S. Drone Incursion

[ Tehran Times ] 9 Dec

The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations has called on the UN to condemn the recent violation of Iranian airspace by a U.S. spy drone RQ-170, that intruded some 250 kilometers inside Iranian territory up to the northern region of the city of Tabas, where it was eventually shot down.

Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Khazaii made the plea in a letter sent Thursday to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, and Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s UN ambassador who holds the rotating Security Council presidency for December.

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Downed U.S. Spy Drone shown on Iran TV [Video]

[ Bloomberg ] 9 Dec

The RQ-170 spy drone, a virtually invisible to radar and carries advanced communications and surveillance gear, made a 2 1/2 minute television debut yesterday on Iran’s state-owned Press TV channel, after it was shot down by Iran a few days ago. 

Bloomberg reports that several U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the drone program is classified, said the greatest concern is that access to the aircraft could give Russian or Chinese scientists insight into its flight controls, communications gear, video equipment and any self-destruct or return-to-base mechanisms.

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Drone loss fuels fears of US technology leak

[ Gulf News ] 7 Dec

The radar-evading RQ-170 drone that crash-landed over the weekend in Iran was on a mission for the CIA, according to a senior US official, raising fears that the aircraft's sophisticated technology could be exploited by Tehran or shared with other American rivals.

It was unclear whether the drone's mission took it over Iran or whether it strayed there accidentally because of technical malfunctions, the official said.

Iran claims that it had "shot down" an American drone on 3 Dec.

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Iran shoots down American drone

[ Reuters ] 4 Dec

A military source in Tehran on state television has told that Iran's military has shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran. Iran has threatened to respond to the violation of Iranian airspace, the military source added.

RQ-170 - also known as Beast of Kandahar (Photo: Aero Wiki)

The drone is said to be RQ-170 type. The downed drone with little damage has been seized by the military, Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted the unnamed source as saying.

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