Australia Cracked US Combat Aircraft Codes

SpamSlapper writes "Former defense minister Kim Beazley has told how Australia cracked top-secret American combat aircraft codes in the 1980s to enable the shooting down of enemy aircraft. The radar on Australia's US-made Hornets could not identify most potentially hostile aircraft in the region — they were set up for European threats — but despite many requests, the codes were not provided, so 'In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves.' The Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made."

Fortunately for America...

[Dystopian Rebel]

"Austria" [www.cbc.ca] is a friendly OPEC member.

Re:Fortunately for America...

[Ajehals]

I just read your post (after posting my own) and had a sudden heart stopping moment that I had read Austria as Australia, as a Brit I assume that would be unforgivable, after all everyone knows that those Australians in their leather pants and kiwi accents are totally different from the BBQ obsessed, Cricket incompetent Austrians.

Re:

[Midnight Thunder]

kiwi accents

You are thinking of New Zealand. Australian's have ozzie accents :) Dingo's come from Australia and Kiwis (both the bird and the fruit - well technically the latter comes from China), come from New Zealand.

Re:

[Byzboy]

Whoosh

The sound of the joke as it passes over your head.

Re:

[Ajehals]

I was looking forward to doing that. You sir, have ruined my day.

I would demand satisfaction, but it turns out that is complicated via the medium of the internet.

Re:

[somersault]

There's always Microsoft Hearts?

Re:

[Ajehals]

Some of us don't have Microsoft let alone hearts...

I quite like that :)

Anyone care to improve it its not quite perfect (My favourite being, "In a world without walls and fences, who need windows and gates" - somone )

Re:Fortunately for America...

[phoenixwade]

Australian's have ozzie accents :)

After thinking long and hard on this, I realized that none of the Aussie's i've met sounded like they were in the middle of a two week drug binge.

Unfortunately, that isn't helpful...

[patio11]

... as Ozzie doesn't sound like he is in the middle of a two week druge binge, either. Two weeks isn't a binge for him, that is more of a "light appetizer before the main course".

Re:Fortunately for America...

[Scrameustache]

as a Brit [...] Cricket incompetent Austrians.

To be fair, cricket is a made up sport without any real rules that the British and their colonies play in order to confuse outsiders.

We're on to you...

Re:Fortunately for America...

[Stefanwulf]

Yeah, I for one will only play sports that people didn't just make up. You know, the ones without arbitrarily defined rules.

Re:

[Monty_Lovering]

Pah!

Cricket is easy. You have two teams of eleven.

The team that is in go out to bat, and the team that are out go out to field.

When all of the team that is in get out, the team that's out goes in.

Repeat. Endlessly.

Brockian Ultra Cricket is the same but involves Universes, or something, instead of balls.

What's not like about a sport with a position called 'Silly Mid-Off'?

Re:Fortunately for America...

[kalirion]

To be fair, cricket is a made up sport without any real rules that the British and their colonies play in order to confuse outsiders.

If only you knew the true horrors of the origins of cricket..... That's one reason the rest of the universe looks down on humans. To make a game based on the Krikkit Wars.....

Re:Fortunately for America...

[IngramJames]

You're half right.

Actually, cricket is an excuse to lie in the sun all day drinking beer while watching other people do gentle excerise. The rules are there so that anyone who questions what you're doing will eventually give up and go away by the time you're explaining the rule for Leg Before Wicket - if not sooner. Anyone who has taken the time to learn the rules enjoys lazing in the sunshine, so you're safe from them.

The only flaw in this otherwise superb idea is that Britain doesn't actually get any sunshine.

Re:Cricket Rules

[Mikkeles]

Here you go:

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he is out. When they are all out, the side that's been out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out, he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who are all out all the time, and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.

(Floating around the net :^)

Re:

[Sique]

On the other hand Austria (the ones with the Alps and the cows and the fantastic ski athlets) was in 2003, during the buildup for the Iraq war, infact threatening to shoot down U.S. aircraft if the U.S. airforce were continuing to fly over Austria without a permit.
In retailiation for that the U.S. were postponing sending the codes for the new Austrian military aircraft in 2007. So also Austria might be persuaded to crack U.S. codes.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:.. And as usual..

[skyshard]

whoooooooooooooooooooosh! did i just see something pass overhead?

Re:.. And as usual..

[internewt]

whoooooooooooooooooooosh! did i just see something pass overhead?

Yeah, a hornet with crippled radar ;)

Re:

[hullabalucination]

Austria is quite a walk up from Australia.

Hey, I've walked from Australia to Austria and except for a couple of damp parts towards the middle it wasn't that bad.

* * * * * *

"Boy, those French, they have a different word for everything!"
--Steve Martin

Re:

[Carewolf]

I am more worried when some major controversy erupts in Slovakia, since you can infact walk to Slovenia from it.

Re:

[Jugalator]

Wow, Bush must have cloned himself a lot to become "Americans"!
But of course, that's only to expect from the evil dictator he is, right? ;-)

Re:

[HermDog]

I thought we were doing it in alphabetical order, but obviously not.

When I was in high school so many years ago, I spent a couple of summer weeks in Europe on one of those tours that shows you everything you can see from a bus. On the flight up to JFK (the one in New York) for our departure to Brussels, one of my classmates commented on how much she was looking forward to visiting Austria. Now I have nothing against Austria, and it turned out to be the country where one of my most memorable experiences on t

Re:

[somersault]

Why would we even want to know where all 50 states are? Knowing that they are in America is enough for most purposes. Knowing their exact location is like asking you to know all the different districts in the UK, rather than knowing where an actual country is.

As for your Who wants to be a Millionaire video... what's your point?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMriTkE3igY [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF4gHS4nvSM [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsOR0PjsjwM [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gL0omV4dfM [youtube.com]

Re:

[Bemopolis]

Oh ferchrissakes somebody get some mods who watch the fucking news to mod this as "Funny" already. Sheesh.

Re:

[MightyYar]

You think that $25 billion a year will bankrupt the US??? Hillary is running for president, and one of the ways that she is selling herself is by spending over $200 billion on health care. Better tell Hillary that she plans on bankrupting us at least 8 times over!

And that assumes that all $25 billion will be new spending, as opposed to offsetting it by reducing operations at other area bases.

Procurement

[Ajehals]

Whoever arranged the procurement of those aircraft in the first place wasn't terribly smart. Who would spend Millions of AU$'s on something that in effect doesn't work, and not just some feature is missing, but the primary use of the thing is impaired, oh and the supplier wont help. As for cracking the codes, when can we expect the Australians to release the cracks? I hate the fact I cant use the F18 I bought on Ebay to shoot down Asia Pacific Rim based Aircraft..

Re:Procurement

[gardyloo]

It's OK --- DVD John will get that sorted out in a few days.

Re:

[kryten_nl]

They cracked the iPod, how difficult could a F-18 be?

Re:

[roseblood]

I've already got it sorted out. Ready?

UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT A B SELECT START

[This text brought to you by the "lameness filter" that says I was YELLING too much in this comment.]

Re:

[somersault]

He might have to try a few times - I've heard the select buttons on F18s tend to wear out quite quickly

Re:Procurement

[TubeSteak]

Here's a different article that puts his words into context:
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=569118 [sundaytimes.co.za]

His comments came "In his farewell speech to parliament before retiring"

Re:Procurement

[westlake]

Whoever arranged the procurement of those aircraft in the first place wasn't terribly smart. Who would spend Millions of AU$'s on something that in effect doesn't work

There are export controls on military hardware and crypto. News at eleven. You buy the plane. You adapt it to your needs.

Re:

[Ajehals]

Granted, but if you are A) A military ally B) A political ally C) A major Trading partner, and D) Allowed to buy modern war planes, you'd think you could organise ot so that the aircraft do what you want. At the end of the day military hardware is pretty much a buyers market (if you have the cash). On a side note does anyone know what happened with the promised waiver of the USA's International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) with regards to the UK?

Re:Procurement

[Protonk]

Read the original comment:

The export restrictions on military hardware doesn't just stop Joe Shmoe from buying an F-18. It helps to create an entire bureaucracy around the sale of same items. Let's take an example of something that isn't strictly military, but dual-use.

Hughes aircraft puts up a satellite on a Chinese launch vehicle (rocket) because it is cheaper than the US alternative and the launch window is more favorable (only so many launch vehicles fly at any given time). Rocket blows up in the air. Hughes aircraft gives the Chinese some pointers in ground control as to what caused the failure and how to avoid it in the future. partially becausee the ground operators were just THERE, partially because Hughes wants to put other satellites up later on the same kind of vehicle, and they don't want a 120 million dollar fireball for their efforts.

OOPS. Turns out that that 'advice' improved a dual use technology, and that the State Department (and Congress, blah, blah) wasn't too happy about it.

How did we figure out which bits of information were allowed or forbidden? It isn't just as simple as "are you an ally? Are you buying our stuff? Ok, go nuts." there is a complex (read: clumsy) enforcement scheme designed to stop information from leaving US borders. We all know this as what stopped cryptosystems from being exported--even though they weren't military-created or robust in any way.

Export enforcement schemes are complex and unwieldy. There is a strong incentive to streamline these restrictions (from Defense Corporations), but also strong incentives to strengthen them (From organizations like the state dept, the NSA, and from Congresscritters who get elected by raising up bogeymen).

Re:

[Ajehals]

Yeah I get it.

But the procurement of Military hardware (which isn't going to be dual use, its not like Australia bought the F18's for crop dusting...) is done by diplomats at a fairly high level, not by company execs. At that level there is scope for all sorts of things ranging from simple technology transfers through to special dispensation. What I was commenting on was that whoever forged this deal either was always aware of the limitations and presumed there was a way around them, assumed that they woul

Re:

[Protonk]

But it IS done by company execs along with those diplomants. The sale is negotiated by US Defense Corps to Austrialian diplomats. It is in the interest of the seller (Boeing/MCD) to limit their disclosure of problems in the products--if they had been clear that there existed a mechanism to prevent the planes from being functional that WOULDN'T be disabled by the US, they would not have made the sale. The end product meets the needs of the buyer only insofar as the buyer does due diligence--that's where t

Re:

[sane?]

The US has a habit of attempting to limit the control the purchasers actually have over their products - in the defence field as well. You'll probably find that Australia wanted to be able to designate A-4s as targets, but the US wanted $Xmillion to make the software change and probably screw up some other stuff at the same time. Therefore Australia cracked the radar software to gain control over their purchases. This behaviour is actually one of the main reason many allied countries avoid buying from the U

Re:

[Don853]

It's probably less export controls and more the disorganized clusterfuck of Initech-like companies that make up the US military-industrial complex. Somebody probably did tell them that they were going to give them the codes, but the request ended up getting lost or mistranslated somewhere in the chain of communication - or got to someone who was hidden behind a union and just couldn't be bothered. It's amazing how long it can take even really simple things to get done when you've got as many bureaucrats,

Re:Procurement

[t123]

This is the Australian defence force we're talking about, the one that spent AU$1 billion on helicopters for the navy [youtube.com] that don't:

1. Fly at night
2. Fly in bad weather
3. Fly over water

Re:

[archen]

A good excuse to stay at home and drink beer... why wouldn't the Aussies buy this?

Re:Procurement

[Xiaran]

I suspect Australia(disclaimer Im Australian) thought that as the US and Australia are very close allies the USAF might give us the ability to use the aircraft we purchased. But hey we followed the US into Iraq so what the hell do we know :)

Your problem is going to USAF ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

I suspect Australia(disclaimer Im Australian) thought that as the US and Australia are very close allies the USAF might give us the ability to use the aircraft we purchased.

I see your problem. The F/A-18 is not a US Air Force aircraft, it is a US Navy aircraft. You went knocking on the wrong door. :-)

Re:

[Marsmensch]

You're absolutely right, but this happens a lot with US arms exports which are normally crippled (on purpose) and have poor post sale support. This is done on purpose by the americans to maintain greater leverage in influencing politics in different regions. It's not what you would expect from a good ally, but it is a clever strategy.

Another example of this are F-16's sold to Chile recently. The codes and procedures for the onboard computers where not provided, something the other models which competed fo

Re:

[Spookticus]

In soviet Russia marked post scroll-button you and replies to reverse you

Understandable

[A beautiful mind]

Mr Beazley said the Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made.

So, we knew that they knew that we cracked the aircraft codes. But did they know that we knew that they knew? It also begs for the question that if they did, did we know that they knew that we knew that they knew?

Re:

[elrous0]

And, for God's sake, what is the plural of nemesis?

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

And, for God's sake, what is the plural of nemesis?

Nemeses.

Chris Mattern

reminds me of rumsfeld the poet

[circletimessquare]

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Re:

[Amouth]

but what do you call it when we know ther are ones we don't know we don't know?

hmmm

[circletimessquare]

i don't know, but i know you might know what we know we don't know we don't know is known as ;-)

and it sounds like poetry

[circletimessquare]

and is therefore funny

you are mistaking the motivations for people finding those words humorous

Re:

[jmv]

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
-- Rumsfeld

Re:

[Yetihehe]

"And no one will convince us that white is white and black is black" - Lech Kaczynski, President of Poland ;)

Cartoony image

[packetmon]

The Americans kept saying they'd provide the codes, but never did. Pictures tall kid dangling candy over another kids head. "Here you go" kid jumps... "Sucker..." "Here you go!" kid jumps again... "Sucker..."

Re:

[biocute]

Pictures tall kid dangling candy over another kids head

Johnny's third attempt hit Sammy's crotch though.

Just wondering...

[corser]

does the DMCA apply retroactively? If so, then Australia can never step foot in the US again.

Re:

[trongey]

...Australia can never step foot in the US again

You apparently don't realize that Australia is a very large island south of Asia. Islands don't have feet. They have roots.

Re:

[Bemopolis]

slands don't have feet. They have roots.

And that is why no man is an island. But wait —what about the Isle of Man?

My head hurts.

We were ALL impressed

[elrous0]

The Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made.

Well, keep in mind that there was a huge Aussie fad in America in the mid-late 80's. We were ALL surprised at how much progress they made at the time. If it hadn't been for the unfortunate "Yahoo Serious" setback in 1988, who knows what they could have ultimately done.

Here is the secret code

[Seumas]

Up
Up
Down
Down
Left
Right
Left
Right
B
A
START

Re:

[spitek]

AND ITS A B Select Start For the Love of God!

Re:Here is the secret code

[log0n]

20 years later and it still makes me laugh :-)

cracked the codes or obtained them through spying?

[z0idberg]

"We spied on them and we extracted the codes,"

So did they managed to crack the codes or did they spy on the US and somehow obtain the codes? I read TFA and still can't figure out which.

I expect it was they cracked the codes as seeing as "Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made.". I don't imagine the seppos would feel "intrigued" about being spied on.

Re:cracked the codes or obtained them through spyi

[jimicus]

So did they managed to crack the codes or did they spy on the US and somehow obtain the codes? I read TFA and still can't figure out which.

My guess is they tried the same code as they had on their luggage and by an amazing coincidence it worked.

Human Rights Violation

[E++99]

'In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves.'

This is a massive violation of human rights. The US DOD has many Australians in it, who may have therefore been spied on by the Australian government without a warrant. Therefore Australia is a police state.

Re:

[DeepHurtn!]

...is this some attempt to make light of Bush's warrantless spying? If so, sorry, it didn't work very well.

Intrigued?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"Oh look at them, they're trying to crack our codes..."

"Oh look, they're actually succeeding. How intriguing!"

"Hey, wait a sec, they're pointing those missiles at use. I continue to be intrigued!"

the USA didn't do anything about it

[circletimessquare]

because at the time, all Australian aircraft fuel was under seige by Lord Humongous in the desert, and Crocodile Dundee was MIA on a walkabout

Happening again with the F-35?

[aktzin]

This reminds me of news reports about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It's meant to replace the F-16 and also be available for export to allied nations starting with the UK. Unfortunately for the potential buyers, the US government wasn't offering to share all the technical details and source code that our allies would need to fully operate and maintain the aircraft. With a quick Google search I just found this article from last year saying the US and UK came to an agreement, don't know what's happened since then. I vaguely remember the Royal Air Force and Navy threatened to cancel their orders and just buy Eurofighter Typhoons instead.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f35-jsf-program-us-uk-reach-technology-transfer-agreement-02495/ [defenseindustrydaily.com]

not enough info

[sam_paris]

I actually RTFA and there is not information on how the Australians cracked the codes, how they spied on the Americans or how the Americans knew about this and why it was so intriguing.

It was to answer those questions that I actually read TFA, so tell me, what use is TFA without the answer to those questions?

Re:

[sarathmenon]

Rule No. 1: Never RTFA. never ever.
Rule No.2: See above.

Export aircraft

[Bullfish]

Though this information has only been released 20 years later, you can bet that any country buying export aircraft from another is going to have their people make adjustments to both the airframe and electronics (including software) to suit their pupose. No one is going to pay a barrel of money for aircraft and not adapt them for their needs. They are also not going to say what they did (for a long while) as that info will no doubt be classified. Ditto the originating country's aircraft will have features that are not exported for the same reasons.

Arggg, possiblyt mistaken meaning of "codes"

[Ancient_Hacker]

I suspect the only thing the Australians did was notice "Hey, there's a F-15 going by our window with USAF on it, the radar IFF says that plane is squaquing "4773". That other USAF is squawking "4771". Let's surmise US fighters all squawk 4773 today and heavies squawk "4771".

That's the most likely meaning of the "codes". Not encryption methods at all.

Re:

[Hoi Polloi]

I'm probably going out on a limb here but I have a suspicion that it is a bit more complex than that.

Re:

[ChrisA90278]

"That's the most likely meaning of the "codes". Not encryption methods at all."

No, I think the most likely meaning of "code" is "source code". The software that runs inside the radar.

Re:

[AHumbleOpinion]

No, I think the most likely meaning of "code" is "source code". The software that runs inside the radar.

No, you are engaging in a geek bias. Politicians would refer to source code as programming, code almost certainly refers to cryptographic data. I expect that we are talking about cryptographic keys needed to decode the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) signals of combat aircraft.

They needed to protect Qantas from the US Navy

[tetranz]

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/13.66.html#subj1 [ncl.ac.uk]

Cryptographic code or Sourse code, big difference

[ChrisA90278]

I suspect this is not related at all to cryptography but "code" here reffers to the software inside the radar signal processor. What they likely had to do was reverse engineer it because they could not get the source code.

A close shave for Australia

[Hoi Polloi]

They were THAT CLOSE to being helpless against an attack by New Zealand. No more Olivia Newton John, Crocadile Dundee, Men at Work...

Pony Up, AU

[neckjonez]

I'd say you owe us at least a couple slabs of VBs!

Re:hm

[biocute]

Former defense minister. It's easy to be forgotten if you're too quiet.

Back on topic, this is what you got for not using open source aircrafts.

Paris Air Show

[cinderblock]

I was at the Paris Air Show a few years ago. One company had on display a MIG cockpit. They had retrofitted it with modern avionics.

The problem was that the display model, that was at the show, was running Windows and had BSODed. I wonder how many they sold...

Re:

[Nenya247]

It won't apply in Australian jurisdiction. Though I would like to see how well DMCA fares if the US ends up unable to export weapons systems due to customers going to suppliers who support their products and do not engage in strong-arm legislative programs to prevent such things.

Re:

[toleraen]

If you're cracking top secret defense systems codes, I don't know if it's the DMCA that I'd be terribly worried about. Also, this happened in the 80s (DMCA was 1996) and it occurred in Australia.

Re:

[budgenator]

They are talking about IFF codes, Interrogator, Friend or Foe, most call it the "Transponder", basically when the shit hits the fan, you get the commercial traffic out of the area, then anything that isn't a known friend is considered a possible foe. The codes to ID friends are changed daily, the codes for commercial are fixed and therefore spoofable. It's not like the codes are that complicated, were talking 80186 or 80286 class computers.

Re:Impotance?

[vlchung]

The timing is not important - the story was told in Parliament as part of his farewell speech.

Kim Beazley, former opposition leader (crude US translation - Minority Leader combined with non-incumbent party presidential candidate) is retiring from politics, and with an election due soon, today was the last day parliament would be sitting before the election. This made today the last time he'll set foot in the parliament as a member of the House of Reps (hence farewell speeches containing a lot of retrospectives). During his time, he was Defense Minister when Labor was last in power (the party / coalition with the most seats in the House of Reps).

Re:

[IainMH]

Australia cracked top-secret American combat aircraft codes in the 1980s
So why is this important now?

Are you saying that things which happened in the past are not important any more?

Re:

[j-pimp]

Because its more than 20 years old and historians can use FOIA requests to study this.

Re:Impotance?

[ZuluZero]

I think the post meant to say "Impotence" - the inability to shoot when desired.

Re:Thrilling story

[Xtense]

Outsmarting somone is enormously satisfying.

If this is true, then you won't mind me being satisfied over nitpicking a typo, eh? :)

Re:Thrilling story

[irtza]

no, I don't think this is a type. Search for somone and u will see that somone is often requested to fix things in numberable fields. Somone is quite smart, so I would be satisfied outsmarting somone. 138,000 search results on google and I am only now hearing of somone. Unbelievable!

Re:

[everphilski]

combination wouldn't happen to be 123 would it?

Re:

[networkBoy]

Amazing! that's the combination to my atmospheric shield!

Take up lockpicking ..

[cheros]

Best go to the MIT site then and pick up Matt Blaize's document about picking locks.

Just one word of warning: a Samsonite briefcase with 4 digit digital lock has actually MORE than 10000 different combinations, the true number of possible combinations of that lock is 11111, which is why a bunch of hackers on a hacker weekend spend the whole weekend trying to open it and didn't succeed (very evil grin) - I hadn't corrected their assumption that it had 10000 combinations :-).

Not that you need that long - it h

Re:

[IndustrialComplex]

And I'm probably overlooking the obvious, but how is that possible? Is there something like a specific order the numbers have to be entered in?

Re:

[nacturation]

And I'm probably overlooking the obvious, but how is that possible? Is there something like a specific order the numbers have to be entered in?

You mean like any other combination lock? 4321 and 1234 are both within the 10,000 number range. If there were no specific order, you could open any such lock in a few minutes.
 

Re:

[rapid_snail]

The total number of combinations is 11110 because you don't need to use all the available positions. For example you could just use one position to enter a number between 0-9 instead to 0009. So the actual number of combinations is 10+100+1000+10000=11110.

Re:

[ars]

It's possible if some dials have more then 10 numbers. Although the number 11111 only has two factors: 41 and 271, so unless you have two dials I'm not sure how it would work.

Re:

[budgenator]

Let me guess, my boss always used 1111