Hezbollah Hacked Israeli Military Radio 360
florescent_beige writes, "Newsday is reporting that Hezbollah was able to monitor secure Israeli military communications, perhaps using technology supplied by Iran, during the recent Lebanon war. A former Israeli general, speaking anonymously, called the results 'disastrous' for Israel. The story reports that an anonymous Lebanese source said that Hezbollah might have taken advantage of Israeli soldiers' mistakes in following secure radio procedures. The radio gear uses frequency hopping and encryption." The article identifies the Israeli communications equipment as the US-designed Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System.
Article sounded suspiciously familiar (Score:4, Informative)
For those interested, here is the original article [atimes.com]. Compare for yourself the various comments.
Still a good reading and it explains why Hezbollah could say they had killed X number of troops or destroyed Y tanks before the Israeli military admitted to the losses. They were listening to the Israeli transmissions from the battlefield!
Re:Frequency hopping? (Score:3, Informative)
Lack of Implementation (Score:2, Informative)
When I was in the military our base frequency changed everyday and our ciphers changed on a regular basis weekly and sometimes daily.
If they were exercising proper procedures the only way I think it could have happened is if they stole an ANPASS(If I remember the name correctly). It includes all the frequencies and ciphers that you would need. Three wrong passwords and it turned into a big paperweight. If that was stolen then they were not keeping track of sensitive items well enough.
Re:I think it may be several things (Score:4, Informative)
The arab Shia are the largest ethnic/religious group in Lebanon, at 30% (if you break it down by religion only, the Christians are larger, although there are many different, and sometimes conflicting, Christian sects). Hezbollah is their largest *political party*, which has a private militia that is more powerful than the Lebanese army (largely thanks to Iran and Syria's generosity, but also thanks to extensive training in fighting the Israeli army since the early 80's). The next largest political party, Amal, doesn't have near their level of support. Of course, don't think too mildly of Amal, either -- they fought Israel just as hard, even during this war, although they don't have Hezbollah's resources. Hezbollah is not only a major political party, but is the country's second largest employer, mostly for its network of government services that it provided to areas that the Lebanese government was either unable to or unwilling to provide to -- schools, hospitals, etc. Public service activism is one of the main ways that the party wins support, even down to the local level. I saw a documentary recently where one Hezbollah woman talked about an initiative she started in which Hezbollah families would stock medical supplies in their homes. Whenever anyone was injured, they could come and get treated for free, so that even if the hospitals were destroyed or taken over, people could get care. By doing things like this, addition to helping their own people, they rally support for Hezbollah at the same time.
Hezbollah has a very tight military discipline. They've been using what's termed "fourth generation warfare" [sfgate.com] by US military analysts. It combines classic guerella tactics with modern weaponry and a unique "peer to peer" communications structure. Weaponry is buried until used, then restored immediately, always in numerous, small caches, making it incredibly difficult to destroy. Local cells operate in their hometowns or other supportive territory, and are able to pick and choose targets as will. Groups communicate with their neighbors to exchange intelligence information; critical information is sent through hardened channels, sometimes even through physical runners. Overall strategy and reserves are controlled by Hezbollah itself. In the 2006 conflict with Israel, the army was bogged down in dealing with the local cells, in their supportive terrain.
Contrary to popular myth, Hezbollah (unlike Hamas and the other Palestinian groups) prefers not to operate around civilians [salon.com]. Not for a concern for the civilians' safety -- they'll confiscate buildings to use as shooting positions if needed, whether their owners like it or not -- but for their own safety. Hamas operates openly as a sign of pride and defiance. However, by doing that, it only takes a tiny handful of defectors to point out to Israel where they are and what they're doing. Hezbollah, on the other hand, prefers to operate in areas where nobody is around to reduce the risk of being exposed by defectors.
As we saw in the last conflict, they're a very effective military, and it's a big question mark on how to deal with them. It's almost funny how the major Arab powers were defeated one after another, yet this tiny band was blowing up warships and taking out hundreds of Merkavas, in addition to maintaining a steady rain of over 100 Katyushas per day throughout the entire conflict. And now their popularity is soaring -- not just in other countries, but even in Lebanon, where they started the conflict. Check out these polls [csmonitor.com]. Check out this [salon.com] as well.
Stupidest propaganda BS on slashdot yet (Score:4, Informative)
What the hell is this youtube video then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aur_DmTIw70 [youtube.com]
And this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68yOJVQA51E [youtube.com]
I'm calling BS. Take your propaganda off of slashdot - I know how to use google!
Possible ideas... (Score:2, Informative)
could have occured (ranked from unlikely to likely)
Incidentally, this is my opinion and not fact so please do not take this out of context.
1) Israel was using an unsecure net (i.e. plaintext, single channel) - This is probably unlikely because as a fighting force, the Israelis are among
the best, specifically in the areas of tactical security.
2) Somebody lost a CYZ-10 encryption device (along with the physical key) - A CYZ-10 (without getting into specifics) secures the comm for the SINGARS.
If this happened and it was not reported, essentially Israel's ENTIRE theaterwide military operations would have been compromised, until a crypto
change-over (while unlikely), assuming that they did not rollover their crypto on a daily or weekly basis, they would have been totally open to anybody.
Again, I'm just speculating, but considering how important it is for us when we conduct combat ops, not to lose compromise comms, these are some real
distinct, possiblities.
Regards,
MBC1977,
(US Marine, College Student, and Good Guy!)
Re:You stoooopid! (Score:2, Informative)
I had to reply to this ridiculous comment.
Israel cares so much about the Palestinians that Ariel Sharon order Sabra and Shatilla [ifamericansknew.org].
Israel cares so much about the Palestinians that they killed over 770 Palestinian children [ifamericansknew.com] since 2000.
Israel cares so much about the Palestinians that they built the apartheid wall [alternet.org] to rob them of their land.
Israel cares so much about the Palestinians that they're starving them. [counterpunch.org]
And on another note: Israel apparently cares about their own Israel-Arab citizens so much they didn't even provide them with bomb shelter [democracynow.org] during the recent Lebanon/Israel conflict.
It's time to stop supporting racism and get you're facts straight.
Re:I think it may be several things (Score:2, Informative)
1. Hezbollah *does* hide behind civillians, thank you very much. Not two months ago it was hiding artillery units - rocketry - in urban areas.
2. The fact that they're brainwashing them (al-manaar?), bribing (should I say "buying"?) their political supporters with Iranian cash (12,000$ per household payments?), and offering them a lifeline (employement? social welfare?) does not change the fact that this organization uses the political power thus purchased to push their agenda (as opposed to that of the people it bribed) and doesn't make them any less of what they are - a fundamentalist religious movement intent on zeal, provocation, further conflict and utter elimination of one of its neighbouring countries.
3. Hezbollah uses hitlerian propaganda tactics to brainwash, incite and worst of all teach hate starting at infancy, demonizing the west as lesser human beings. Ask any 3-year-old from a Hezbollah-funded kindergarden, he'll be happy to explain it to you using all the graphic terms you'd expect. All that Iranian money doesn't come for free you know.
4. Hezbollah is "a political party" when it needs to be, and a sovereign not answerable to the government it was claiming to be a part of (i.e. has its own military) when it needs to be. For the life of me I haven't figured this out. How *does* that work? What would happen in the hypothetical situation that it declared war against a neighbour? would it still be
In Lebanon, as it appears, you very much can. All you need is a solid supply of cash and guns.
You'd have to be either pushing a close agenda or seriously naive (I shy away from harder terms) to be giving the pitch about their legitimacy.
So... what
Case in point: doing any amount of good does not absolve you of doing evil or driving a zealous agenda opposed to any modern values (values cynically used by offending party left and right, often exagerated or simply lied about, to show the party's suffering and gather support, mind you).
Hezbollah, is busy putting on a snake-oil-salesman smile and buying political support from dirt-poor shia with a serious inferiority complex.
Fixing this would first and foremost mean its financial source be replaced with one coming from people that don't blindly hate and are thus socially compatible with the rest of the peoples of the modern world. With money come the macro interests being followed.
Re:I think it may be several things (Score:3, Informative)
"Tiny band": estimated 3,000 regulars + 10,000 reserves. Not exactly "tiny" by Middle Eastern standards
"hundreds of merkava tanks": 14 [wikipedia.org]
"blowing up warships": one ship was damaged and towed for repairs. Hardly blown up, definitely not in the plural
I must congratulate you on managing to compress so many lies into a singe sentence....