I remember when we discovered that militants in Afghanistan were monitoring Predator video feeds because apparently nobody had ever put in a requirement that the video stream be encrypted.
Militants in Iraq and Afghanistan have intercepted live video feeds from unmanned U.S. Predator drones using $26 off the shelf software made by a Russian company, says a report in the Wall Street Journal.
IIRC that was because the Predator video feeds were intended to be viewed in-theatre by officers right there on the front, and military protocol around encryption keys would have made it so no one at the front would have been able to decrypt the feed.
Considering they were designed in the early 90s, i.e. before public-key cryptography took off with SSL, that explanation always seemed plausible to me.
I remember when we discovered that militants in Afghanistan were monitoring Predator video feeds because apparently nobody had ever put in a requirement that the video stream be encrypted.
https://www.networkworld.com/article/769321/insurgents-intercept-video-feeds-from-u-s-drones-using-26-software-report-says.html
IIRC that was because the Predator video feeds were intended to be viewed in-theatre by officers right there on the front, and military protocol around encryption keys would have made it so no one at the front would have been able to decrypt the feed.
Considering they were designed in the early 90s, i.e. before public-key cryptography took off with SSL, that explanation always seemed plausible to me.