Su-30MKI: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

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Rishi_Tri
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Rishi_Tri »

rsingh wrote:Any chance Chinese bringing down SU-30 ? It is highly possible.
Anything is possible but highly unlikely. Doimara in Bhalukpong being given as the location where wreckage has been located in almost Assam.

If it is Chinese shoot down must have a SAM with range of 100 km .. extremely accurate. More likely - Pilots, hope they are safe, got taken in by the scenic greenery on offer.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by shiv »

rsingh wrote:Any chance Chinese bringing down SU-30 ? It is highly possible.
How is it highly possible? I think it is highly unlikely. For the media anything in Arunachal Pradesh is "Almost China" and anything outside delhi is "near Chinese border" Not too much different from Bengaluru where we treat people from Arunachal Pradesh like Chinese while we kiss Paki/Kashmiri ass.

We need not have those attitudes and we can check the location and ask if IAF habitually puts its thumb in musharraf and would be unable to know if China is periodically lighting up Indian skies with radar signals with a view to tracking and shooting down Indian aircraft in Indian territory.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Singha »

Search party is yet to reach the site. A photo shows rear fuselage on a wooded slope.

Army is trekking cross country perhaps to clear a helipad before iaf can send technical team
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by ramana »

Sometime folks ask out of concern * and not being troublemakers. No need for multiple replies.

* Could be away from Desh for long time. Hype about China. Constant denigration by Indian media. Look at that silly article by former head of NATGRID.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by JTull »

Imagine this situation during hostilities. I'm very disappointed by IAF's search and rescue capabilities. Every few years it shows how investments in building this capability have not achieved anything.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Singha »

More than a decade ago i had posted this on brf

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic ... em-167035/

Sarbe rescue beacon like a personal walkie talkie...i wonder if that contract really purchased for all pilots or was shelved after a small lot?
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Prithwiraj »

JTull wrote:Imagine this situation during hostilities. I'm very disappointed by IAF's search and rescue capabilities. Every few years it shows how investments in building this capability have not achieved anything.
There had been many instances where planes have disappeared out of thin air in so called more "advanced and developed" countries --- apart from the obvious failure to trace--- Malaysian Airliner--- one interesting case was the disappearance of Steve Fossett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fossett

It took almost a year to trace his small aeroplane in mainland America
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Guddu »

Singha wrote:More than a decade ago i had posted this on brf

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic ... em-167035/

Sarbe rescue beacon like a personal walkie talkie...i wonder if that contract really purchased for all pilots or was shelved after a small lot?
https://www.breitling.com/en/emergency/

Pl. google Breitling emergency II watch, if above link does not work. I use the watch, but that's mostly as a backup to find my way home from the pub. :D
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by chetak »

rsingh wrote:Any chance Chinese bringing down SU-30 ? It is highly possible.

take a look at this and farfetched as it may seem, don't discount it.

we, BRF need to pay greater attention to this type of threat.

maybe a guru can start a separate thread??


‘Sukhoi likely downed by cyber weapons’




‘Sukhoi likely downed by cyber weapons’
By MADHAV NALAPAT | New Delhi | 27 May, 2017


Madhav Nalapat, New York, St Petersburg, UP, cyber interference, United States, USS Donald Cook

Given the range of cyber interference, the source of the attack could have been from thousands of kilometres or from only a few hundred metres away.


Analysts based in the vicinity of New York and St Petersburg warn that the loss, days ago, of an advanced and mechanically certified as safe, Sukhoi 30 fighter aircraft, close to the border with China may be the result of “cyber-interference with the onboard computers” in the cockpit. This may explain why even the pilots may have found it difficult to activate safety ejection mechanisms, once it became obvious that the aircraft was in serious trouble, as such mechanisms too could have been crippled by computer malfunctions induced from an outside source. They point to the apparent loss of five Army vehicles, “due (according to the authorities) to a misfired mortar strike” in the same zone, saying that a single mortar round would not have enough firepower to take out such a large number of vehicles. They add that the possibilities are that the damage may have been caused by a larger projectile guided by electronic systems that may have been interfered with during flight. Given the range and complexity of cyber interference, the source of the attack could have been from thousands of kilometres or from only a few hundred metres away. These analysts warn that although India spends over Rs 200,000 crore on defence through the armed forces and another Rs 100,000 crore on security via police units, hardly Rs 4,700 crore gets spent on cyber capability. The analysts spoken to point out that almost all this gets expended on foreign vendors, rather than domestic producers. However, this reliance on foreign shores for defence and security is across the board, so far as capital expenditure is concerned, in contrast to China, which has almost entirely indigenised its capabilities over the past 15 years.

The international analysts spoken to, who are based in Russia and the United States, two of the four giants in the cyber field (the others being Israel and China), point to the devastating effect of the lightning shutdown of the Northern Power Grid on two separate occasions in August 2012. These were attributed by authorities to an “overdrawing” of power by Uttar Pradesh, omitting to consider the fact that such excess power consumption is routine, and that in the past, UP had withdrawn far more electricity from the grid than had been the case when it tripped. They say that it is probable that a cyber-related malfunction of a key gauge may have occurred, leading to the breakdown in supplies. It is pertinent to recall (to illustrate cyber capabilities) that it was at that time that the US and Israel introduced Stuxnet into even non-internet related control systems in the nuclear industry in Iran. As a consequence, the nuclear process gauges showed acceptable speeds, even while remote commands raised the speed of certain processes to unsafe levels, thereby leading to a shutdown in operations. Of course, they add that it is “next to impossible” that either the US or Israel were behind the Northern Grid power outage, although both have the capability to inflict such damage on essential civilian infrastructure, and that the Stuxnet example was only given as an illustration of the lethality of cyber weaponry.

The impact of cyber warfare on complex machinery may be judged by the crippling of the USS Donald Cook in April 2014 by electronic interference sourced from a high-flying Sukhoi-24. Exactly a year later, yet another Sukhoi disabled the USS Theodore Roosevelt (an aircraft carrier armed with multiple defensive and safety mechanisms) in the Baltic Sea. Both naval vessels had to be towed to safety, as their onboard propulsion systems got damaged by electronic interference. Other large-scale disruptions caused by cyber warfare include the crippling of operations of Stockholm airport for three days last year. There had also been large-scale power outages in the US more than a decade ago, after the worst of which a warning was conveyed by US authorities to the (state) perpetrator that the next time around, there would be a disproportionate cyber reaction to the event, targeting the offending country. Needless to say, that was the last time large-scale disruptions of the same kind occurred within the US.

Given the push towards digitalisation by the Narendra Damodardas Modi government since 26 May 2014, the realm of cyberspace has become critical in the security and economic matrix of the country. In this context, cyber theft from banks is a vulnerability which needs to be eliminated. However, as yet authorities have adopted a conventional approach towards such crimes, as for illustration the overnight siphoning of Rs 1,200 crore ($171.2 million) from Union Bank of India on 20 July 2016 through seven “swift” transactions. $166 million was taken from Union Bank’s account in New York Citibank, while 5 million was removed from J.P. Morgan Chase, again in New York. The money was wired to seven accounts: Mrs *****, SIAM Bank, Thailand; Mr Sithonno, Canadia Bank, Cambodia; Sactec Corporation, Sinopec Bank, Taiwan; Mr Cheng Nesgig, Indo-China Bank, Cambodia; and three other accounts.

During the same period, Bank of Maharashtra is reported to have lost Rs 25 crore through fraud in their digital payments mechanism. Interestingly, the same year, a Bangladesh bank lost $89 million in the same manner as Union Bank of India. While the Bangladesh authorities visited Sri Lanka to bring the account holders (into which the cash had been transferred) to justice, thus far authorities in India do not appear to have been to the locations where the money was sent, to interview the recipients. In the Indian cases, authorities focused on backdoor diplomacy to try and get back some of the money stolen, rather than aggressively pursue the perpetrators and the beneficiaries. As a consequence, India is widely regarded globally as a soft target for cybercrime, despite harsh laws on the subject. “What counts is not law but implementation and the capability to react, and in both, India has remained well below its size and potential”, these experts claim. Based in the vicinity of New York and St Petersburg, they warn that the capabilities of Indian authorities in the cybercrime realm are of a “Fourth World” standard. They claim that only Open Source tools are used in this country to track depredators, including by locating IP addresses. However, such addresses can be easily disguised by experienced hackers, thereby leading to the wrong locations being blamed for a cyber attack. Hence, in case an attack comes from a particular country, it is close to impossible for Indian authorities to identify the source, which means that there is no way of knowing who to complain to and about whom. Unlike the US, Russia, Israel or China, where each has the capability to penetrate through such dodges and establish where exactly an attack originated from, India has thus far relied on outside police forces to deal with cybercrime in this country, many of which are in locations compromised by graft and connivance with criminal gangs.

Globally, geopolitics specialists consider Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be among the top four global leaders (the others being Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin). They, therefore, expect that India under PM Modi will soon rectify the vulnerability caused by decades of neglect of the fact that the realm of cyberspace is likely to be the theatre of future conflict. MoS (MEA) General V.K. Singh, while Chief of Army Staff, had put together a cyber warfare group, but this seems to have been relegated in importance by his successors. Interestingly, in the US, the backbone of that superpower’s cyber capability in both attack and defence is talent from India, either still holding Indian passports or naturalised citizens. They say that military mishaps which may be passed off as accidents may in fact be the consequence of cyber warfare from unknown sources, as there are multiple groups of experienced hackers globally available on hire to the highest bidder. They say that the creation of stronger firewalls against cyber intrusions, including in the corporate and urban infrastructure sphere, needs to become a top priority of the Modi government as it crosses its first 1,000 days of existence.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by shaun »

There are switches which can override computers , at least for jettison from the cockpit. Manual overriding with basic controls present in all modern a/c s
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by chetak »

shaun wrote:There are switches which can override computers , at least for jettison from the cockpit. Manual overriding with basic controls present in all modern a/c s
many modern aircraft are completely inoperable with their computers down.

the sukhoi is fly by wire.

No computer, no fly.
Yes, the first such airplane was the F-16. It was designed as inherently aerodynamically unstable, which allows it to respond superbly in combat. This was made possible in that it is a fly-by-wire aircraft. Maneuverability is increased, because by definition it is the ability to change states. Stability is the resistance to change. The more stable you are, the harder it is to turn/pitch quickly in a dynamic situation.

And yes, a pilot would not be able to land these aircraft if the fly-by-wire systems became inoperative. There are instances where F-16 pilots have lost their computer and have died because of Pilot Induced Oscillations - the condition where the pilot isn't correcting for their aircraft's instability at a rate fast enough to maintain control.

Other such unstable aircraft are the B-2, F-22, F-35, Eurofighter, etc. All modern fighters need to be inherently unstable to be competitive.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by shiv »

In case anyone is interested - the magenta circle represents a radius of 60 km from Tezpur. It is in India you know. Not China.

Image
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by chetak »

cyber weapons are not respectful of borders, visa and immigration controls or even diplomatic niceties, for that matter. :)

For argument's sake, nothing stops the hans from deploying it via drone or satellite or even a high flying aircraft.

MD Nalapat is a very credible chappie and one would be wise to give this input its due consideration.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by shiv »

chetak wrote:
rsingh wrote:Any chance Chinese bringing down SU-30 ? It is highly possible.

take a look at this and farfetched as it may seem, don't discount it.

we, BRF need to pay greater attention to this type of threat.
The article is IMO pretty ridiculous and can only be defended by the excuse that "We would be blinkered if we don't pay attention to this"

I am perfectly happy for people to hold their views about the truth of the article but as far as I can see the opinion piece lists all the powers of this mythical cyberwarfare without asking of the vulnerabilities that may exist or checking facts.

"Cyberwarfare coyuld have interfered with the Su 30's systems" it says OK fine. Does the Su-30 actually have systems that can be interfered with in this way? In the absence of any attempt at answering this question - only the cyberwarfare part is taken as true. What is worse - the article claims that the ejection seat mechanism could have been interfered with so it did not work. Heck those Su-30s have been firing off ejection seats just like that even without cyberwarfare. That could have happened no?


What is worse is the linking of this story with damage to 5 vehicles by mortar fire. And the logic is
1. Mortar shell too small to damage 5 vehicles
2. Therefore some other bigger mysterious cyberweapon was fired.

It could have been soosai bomber no? Why does the article discount that. If one does not list out all the possibilities and randomly picks one as the most likely possibility one is shitting on the intelligence of readers. I am going to wash that shit from my mind. What others do is their prerogative.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by shiv »

chetak wrote:cyber weapons are not respectful of borders, visa and immigration controls or even diplomatic niceties, for that matter. :)

For argument's sake, nothing stops the hans from deploying it via drone or satellite or even a high flying aircraft.

MD Nalapat is a very credible chappie and one would be wise to give this input its due consideration.
His credibility in my eyes is rapidly going downhill..

Why blame the Chinese? It could be Al Qaeda. Why would the Chinese draw attention to themselves by bringing down a Sukhoi close to their border? Why not bring down a Tejas near Sulur? That would cripple India worse than bringing down an Su-30 whose ejections seats are known to fire off without cyberwarfare
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Cybaru »

How does one attack the fly by wire computer of the sukhoi? Thats assuming that you can connect to a flying sukhoi, take over fly by wire systems and shut them down in flight? You will have to maintain a strong lock and have network connectivity to do all that.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by shiv »

Cybaru wrote:How does one attack the fly by wire computer of the sukhoi? Thats assuming that you can connect to a flying sukhoi, take over fly by wire systems and shut them down in flight? You will have to maintain a strong lock and have network connectivity to do all that.
Not at all - the Chinese are all powerful.

I am reminded of my grandmother who used to cause me unending amusement when I was a young medical student. Whenever a lady in her 40s or 50s had any symptoms or any illness, my grandma would diagnose it as 'Menopause". It was funnier because she used to say "Mainopos" So when a poor daughter in law or other lady had viral fever, fibroids, jet lag or whatever my grandmother would say "mainopos"

It was simple. She knew only one diagnosis "Mainopos" . If she had known of 10 other possibilities she would have been less sure and appeared unsure like a doctor would have to be.

In the case of the Sukhoi - ALL possibilities have to be looked at and when everything known is ruled out one must think of hacking/cyberwarfare also. But even before the wreckage is recovered and looked at, claiming that one particular cause is "likely" is bullshit of the highest order.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by srai »

Fake news
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by chetak »

Cybaru wrote:How does one attack the fly by wire computer of the sukhoi? Thats assuming that you can connect to a flying sukhoi, take over fly by wire systems and shut them down in flight? You will have to maintain a strong lock and have network connectivity to do all that.
That's what one needs to find out.

I would not have believed this either and all this is out on the public domain.

What's not out in the public domain is a matter of complete conjecture.

Also, the cyber warfare guys are not just sitting on their thumbs or resting on their past laurels. They are out there, every day, all day, probing, testing and occasionally deploying cyberwarfare weapons in real world situations to check them out.

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/malware-s ... nking-led/

A FEW HOURS after dark one evening earlier this month, a small quadcopter drone lifted off from the parking lot of Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel. It soon trained its built-in camera on its target, a desktop computer’s tiny blinking light inside a third-floor office nearby. The pinpoint flickers, emitting from the LED hard drive indicator that lights up intermittently on practically every modern Windows machine, would hardly arouse the suspicions of anyone working in the office after hours. But in fact, that LED was silently winking out an optical stream of the computer’s secrets to the camera floating outside.

That data-stealing drone, shown in the video below, works as a Mr. Robot-style demonstration of a very real espionage technique. A group of researchers at Ben-Gurion’s cybersecurity lab has devised a method to defeat the security protection known as an “air gap,” the safeguard of separating highly sensitive computer systems from the internet to quarantine them from hackers. If an attacker can plant malware on one of those systems—say, by paying an insider to infect it via USB or SD card—this approach offers a new way to rapidly pull secrets out of that isolated machine. Every blink of its hard drive LED indicator can spill sensitive information to any spy with a line of sight to the target computer, whether from a drone outside the window or a telescopic lens from the next roof over.

https://youtu.be/4vIu8ld68fc



“If an attacker has a foothold in your air-gapped system, the malware still can send the data out to the attacker,” says Ben-Gurion researcher Mordechai Guri, who has spent years focusing on finding techniques for ferreting data out of isolated computer systems. “We found that the small hard drive indicator LED can be controlled at up to 6,000 blinks per second. We can transmit data in a very fast way at a very long distance.”

Gap Attack
An air gap, in computer security, is sometimes seen as an impenetrable defense. Hackers can’t compromise a computer that’s not connected to the internet or other internet-connected machines, the logic goes. But malware like Stuxnet and the Agent.btz worm that infected American military systems a decade ago have proven that air gaps can’t entirely keep motivated hackers out of ultra-secret systems—even isolated systems need code updates and new data, opening them to attackers with physical access. And once an air-gapped system is infected, researchers have demonstrated a grab bag of methods for extracting information from them despite their lack of an internet connection, from electromagnetic emanations to acoustic and heat signaling techniques—many developed by the same Ben-Gurion researchers who generated the new LED-spying trick.

JUMPING THE AIR GAP
Hacker Lexicon: What Is an Air Gap?
KIM ZETTER
Hacker Lexicon: What Is an Air Gap?
Researchers Hack Air-Gapped Computer With Simple Cell Phone
KIM ZETTER
Researchers Hack Air-Gapped Computer With Simple Cell Phone
fan
KIM ZETTER
Clever Attack Uses the Sound of a Computer’s Fan to Steal Data
Stealing Data From Computers Using Heat
KIM ZETTER
Stealing Data From Computers Using Heat
But exploiting the computer’s hard drive indicator LED has the potential to be a stealthier, higher-bandwidth, and longer-distance form of air-gap-hopping communications. By transmitting data from a computer’s hard drive LED with a kind of morse-code-like patterns of on and off signals, the researchers found they could move data as fast as 4,000 bits a second, or close to a megabyte every half hour. That may not sound like much, but it’s fast enough to steal an encryption key in seconds. And the recipient could record those optical messages to decode them later; the malware could even replay its blinks on a loop, Guri says, to ensure that no part of the transmission goes unseen.

The technique also isn’t as limited in range as other clever systems that transmit electromagnetic signals or ultrasonic noises from speakers or a computer’s fans. And compared to other optical techniques that use the computer’s screen or keyboard light to secretly transmit information, the hard-drive LED indicator—which blinks anytime a program accesses the hard drive—routinely flashes even when a computer is asleep. Any malware that merely gains the ability of a normal user, rather than deeper administrative privileges, can manipulate it. The team used a Linux computer for their testing, but the effects should be the same on a Windows device.

“The LED is always blinking as it’s doing searching and indexing, so no one suspects, even in the night,” says Guri. “It’s very covert, actually.”

Slow and Steady
The researchers found that when their program read less than 4 kilobytes from the computer’s storage at a time, they could cause the hard drive’s LED indicator to blink for less than a fifth of a millisecond. They then tried using those rapid fire blinks to send messages to a variety of cameras and light sensors from an “infected” computer using a binary system of data encoding known as “on-off-keying,” or OOK. They found that a typical smartphone camera can at most receive around 60 bits per second due to its lower frame rate, while a GoPro camera captured as much as 120 bits per second. A Siemens photodiode sensor was far better suited to their high-frequency light sensing needs, though, and allowed them to hit their 4,000 bits per second maximum transmission rate.

The malware could also make the hard drive LED blink so briefly, in fact, that it would be undetectable to human eyes, yet still registered by the light sensor. That means an attacker could even send invisible light signals to a faraway spy, albeit at a slower rate to avoid its covert blinks blurring into a visible signal. “It’s possible for the attacker to do such fast blinking that a human never sees it,” says Guri.

The good news, however, for anyone security-sensitive enough to worry about the researchers’ attack—and anyone who air gaps their computers may be just that sensitive—is that the Ben Gurion researchers point to clear countermeasures to block their hard drive LED exfiltration method. They suggest keeping air-gapped machines in secure rooms away from windows, or placing film over a building’s glass designed to mask light flashes. They also note that protective software on a target machine could randomly access the hard drive to create noise and jam any attempt to send a message from the computer’s LED.

But the simplest countermeasure by far is simply to cover the computer’s LED itself. Once, a piece of tape over a laptop’s webcam was a sign of paranoia. Soon, a piece of tape obscuring a computer’s hard drive LED may be the real hallmark of someone who imagines a spy drone at every window.

or this

https://www.wired.com/2014/12/hacker-lexicon-air-gap/

How do you remotely hack a computer that is not connected to the internet? Most of the time you can’t, which is why so-called air-gapped computers are considered more secure than others.

An air-gapped computer is one that is neither connected to the internet nor connected to other systems that are connected to the internet.

Air gaps generally are implemented where the system or network requires extra security, such as classified military networks, the payment networks that process credit and debit card transactions for retailers, or industrial control systems that operate critical infrastructure. To maintain security, payment and industrial control systems should only be on internal networks that are not connected to the company’s business network, thus preventing intruders from entering the corporate network through the internet and working their way to sensitive systems.

A true air gap means the machine or network is physically isolated from the internet, and data can only pass to it via a USB flash drive, other removable media, or a firewire connecting two computers directly. But many companies insist that a network or system is sufficiently air-gapped even if it is only separated from other computers or networks by a software firewall. Such firewalls, however, can be breached if the code has security holes or if the firewalls are configured insecurely.


Although air-gapped systems were believed to be more secure in the past, since they required an attacker to have physical access to breach them, recent attacks involving malware that spread via infected USB flash drives have shown the lie to this belief. One of the most famous cases involving the infection of an air-gapped system is Stuxnet, the virus/worm designed to sabotage centrifuges used at a uranium enrichment plant in Iran. Computer systems controlling the centrifuges were air-gapped, so the attackers designed Stuxnet to spread surreptitiously via USB flash drives. Outside contractors responsible for programming the systems in Iran were infected first and then became unwitting carriers for the malware when they brought their laptops into the plant and transferred data to the air-gapped systems with a flash drive.

More recently, evidence has shown that air-gapped systems can also be attacked through radio waves. Researchers in Israel showed how they could siphon data from an air-gapped machine using radio frequency signals and a nearby mobile phone. The proof-of-concept hack involves radio signals generated and transmitted by an infected machine’s video card, which are used to send passwords and other data over the air to the FM radio receiver in a mobile phone.

The method is more than just a concept, however, to the NSA. The spy agency has reportedly been using a more sophisticated version of this technique for years to siphon data from air-gapped machines in Iran and elsewhere. Using an NSA hardware implant called the Cottonmouth-I, which comes with a tiny embedded transceiver, the spy agency can extract data from targeted systems via RF signals and transmit it to a briefcase-sized NSA relay station up to eight miles away.

That’s a pretty large air gap to jump. This, and the use of attacks via USB flash drives, effectively mean that no air-gapped system is beyond the reach of attackers.

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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by shiv »

The fact is Nalapad may be a great patriot and a well wisher who wants to draw attention to cyber-hacking - but sensationalism by saying that the Su -30 was "likely" to have been brought down by cyber hacking is gutter journalism. There is no excuse for creating false stories (gau rakshak stories and stories of babies suckling mothers killed by Indian army) just to draw attention to something else.

There already is a cyberwar thread where this crap can be posted not here. Completely OT and totally condemnable.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by darshhan »

shiv wrote:
chetak wrote:cyber weapons are not respectful of borders, visa and immigration controls or even diplomatic niceties, for that matter. :)

For argument's sake, nothing stops the hans from deploying it via drone or satellite or even a high flying aircraft.

MD Nalapat is a very credible chappie and one would be wise to give this input its due consideration.
His credibility in my eyes is rapidly going downhill..

Why blame the Chinese? It could be Al Qaeda. Why would the Chinese draw attention to themselves by bringing down a Sukhoi close to their border? Why not bring down a Tejas near Sulur? That would cripple India worse than bringing down an Su-30 whose ejections seats are known to fire off without cyberwarfare
Hell why only Al qaeda. If indeed it was a cyber attack as stated by MD Nalapat, then the prime suspect would be USA. Come to think of it, China would never use such capabilities in peacetime.Ofcourse after assuming they have already developed such capablities which is a big if. just think
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by darshhan »

And if an extremely closed loop system like SU30 can be cyber compromised, then the world(not just India) has a very big problem.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by chetak »

darshhan wrote:
shiv wrote: His credibility in my eyes is rapidly going downhill..

Why blame the Chinese? It could be Al Qaeda. Why would the Chinese draw attention to themselves by bringing down a Sukhoi close to their border? Why not bring down a Tejas near Sulur? That would cripple India worse than bringing down an Su-30 whose ejections seats are known to fire off without cyberwarfare
Hell why only Al qaeda. If indeed it was a cyber attack as stated by MD Nalapat, then the prime suspect would be USA. Come to think of it, China would never use such capabilities in peacetime.Ofcourse after assuming they have already developed such capablities which is a big if. just think
It does not matter who or what or even if.

it only needs to be seen if such an attack is within the realm of possibilities.

someone is simply suggesting that it is.

so many don't need to get their panties in a twist.

If one does not like the hypothesis, move on.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by darshhan »

A country like china if and when it develops such capabilities will guard it even more secretively than stealth or hypersonic technologies. For a one off incident such a cyber sword(assuming it exists) will never be unsheathed.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by shiv »

chetak wrote: It does not matter who or what or even if.

it only needs to be seen if such an attack is within the realm of possibilities.

someone is simply suggesting that it is.

so many don't need to get their panties in a twist.

If one does not like the hypothesis, move on.
It's not about liking or disliking the hypothesis. It is objecting to the blatant sensationalist tripe that says that this "hypothesis" is the "likely" cause of the crash.

It is one thing to talk about a possible cause. It is a completely different thing to pinpoint that cause as "likely" which is what the headline of Nalapat's article says. It is necessary to point out this contemptible chicanery before moving on. That is what untwists my panties.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by darshhan »

Maybe Nalapat wanted to imply electronic warfare and instead confused it with cyber warfare.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by darshhan »

While cyber warfare itself is a gamechanger, make no mistake the capability to take down closed loop systems from a stand off distance is a true disruptive event.

Even stuxnet was ported through usb devices. I am pretty sure SU30s wouldn't be allowing even that.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Singha »

I can think of four vectors

1.some mystery like the malaysia airline 777
2. Mission plan and waypoint card..in jaguar this is a pcmcia removable card which pilots insert before sortie..must be similar in su30...the base computers who program these cards would need to be compromised
3. Lru either from russia oem or india whose internals are bugged with some stuxnet type thing and activated by remote signal from say a hale drone
4. Oem sw update to fcs or engine mgmt...

We need to think about all this seriously.

None of these details how iaf manages these are in public domain.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by shiv »

Actually the way to go about is is to get the wreckage, get the black box if any - search for causes and eliminate one by one, taking into account the maintenance/service history of that aircraft. Also: Did the two ejection seats fire off without warning - as has happened on 3 Sukhois in the past - or has that problem been sorted out?

We cannot have a crash and say "Looks like it was a particle beam from China". Imagine if the Air Force starts doing that. Doctors are fully capable of doing this kind of mumbo jumbo and pinpointing unlikely diseases and screw with patients because no one knows anyway. But, frankly I trust the integrity of the IAF more than some of the doctors I know
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by chetak »

Singha wrote:I can think of four vectors

1.some mystery like the malaysia airline 777
2. Mission plan and waypoint card..in jaguar this is a pcmcia removable card which pilots insert before sortie..must be similar in su30...the base computers who program these cards would need to be compromised
3. Lru either from russia oem or india whose internals are bugged with some stuxnet type thing and activated by remote signal from say a hale drone
4. Oem sw update to fcs or engine mgmt...

We need to think about all this seriously.
That is exactly what I suggested, we just need to think about it seriously.

remember the IAF SU that crashed when the unqualified rear seater simply and mistakenly switched off the FCS??

Now, that very same switch is guarded and wire locked.

This was also considered well beyond the realm of possibility before the incident, no?? No one would be foolish enough to switch off the FCS in flight, right??

well, some one did.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by chetak »

shiv wrote:Actually the way to go about is is to get the wreckage, get the black box if any - search for causes and eliminate one by one, taking into account the maintenance/service history of that aircraft. Also: Did the two ejection seats fire off without warning - as has happened on 3 Sukhois in the past - or has that problem been sorted out?

We cannot have a crash and say "Looks like it was a particle beam from China". Imagine if the Air Force starts doing that. Doctors are fully capable of doing this kind of mumbo jumbo and pinpointing unlikely diseases and screw with patients because no one knows anyway. But, frankly I trust the integrity of the IAF more than some of the doctors I know
It goes without saying that the IAF will do all this and much more during the post-crash investigation. The OEM reps from Russia would have already flown out.

They may have recovered the black box and voice recorder by now, hopefully in a usable condition.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by tsarkar »

If memory serves right, in Flight Safety 2013, there is a citation of an airman who found the cause of uncontrolled ejections - design issue compounded by build/fitting issues. There was a fleet wide modification post those findings.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by kapilrdave »

People fear of the things they can't understand or explain. People fear the ghosts because they don't know anything about the ghosts. That is the reason why scary movies are made on ghosts, scary situations are created using cyber attack in movies (mostly they are hilarious at best and ridiculous at worst).

Wanna hack a computer password? the hero can do it in 2 minutes while being sucked by the babe. Need the traffic signals of entire city to be controlled to help the hero? The sidekick does it 'on demand' basis. Want to propose the gaal? The school dropout friend can hack the entire city's electric grid system to blackout the entire city but the only lights which perfectly lights up the phrase "I Love You" right infront of the cheek :rotfl: .

You just have to say "cyber attack" and the subject is not meant to be explained at all. Ghosts can do anything. Hackers can also do anything. The onus of explanation is always left on the more informed person, not on the writer. Funny.

In this story, the cyber ghost is joined by another ghost, 'china ghost'! Both can do anything. And together they do wonders!

So now that the ghost story has already been told to us, we feel the burden of explaining it :lol: .
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Karan M »

Chdtak ji, in earlier soviet era fighters, the datalink allowed flight control. I dont know whether the polyot datalink in Su series allows that. In the former types of fighters, the cyber scenario is theoretically possible. Otherwise, it has to be focused EMP style weaponry, which us unlikely given how bulky they are to transport.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Karan M »

Our Su-30s have this feature.
http://www.sukhoi.mariwoj.pl/su-30-ru-27pu.htm
But its not G2A control..earlier MiG-29 Lazur datalink, was for GCI control. Theoretically dangerous, but getting a LOS VHF system into the Indian side would mean intel failure. Not impossible but not easy either, VHF radios can be small. But this is Lazur not Polyot datalink..

The MiG-29 Lazur Data Link System:

The Lazur Data link System is a two-way system, GCI-to-Fighter and Fighter-to-GCI. It is composed of the SAU-451-04 automatic control system, the E502-20/04 airborne guidance system, the R-862 radio, A-611 marker radio receiver, SO-69 ATC responder with the UNN block/K-42E kit, the ARK-19 radio compass, the TESTER-UZ/LK flight data recorder, and the ALMAZ-UP information reporting system. The MiG-29 appears to have no Fighter-to-Fighter capability yet. Transmitted target information is displayed on the HUD display which is the primarily display, then on the radar scope and appropriate cockpit instruments. The "GUIDANCE" switch on the Air-to-Ground Panel must be "ON". A Data Link Frequency nees to be selected and a Data Link Mode selected from the "GCI SITE", "AIR TRAFFIC", or "TERMINAL" options. The system operates in the VHF frequency band and is effectively line-of-sight limited.
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by chetak »

Karan M wrote:Chdtak ji, in earlier soviet era fighters, the datalink allowed flight control. I dont know whether the polyot datalink in Su series allows that. In the former types of fighters, the cyber scenario is theoretically possible. Otherwise, it has to be focused EMP style weaponry, which us unlikely given how bulky they are to transport.
I'm not thinking data link or EMP, Karan M ji.

Data link in the Indian scenario is more for sensor data transmission and highly unlikely that it would/could be linked to the FCS. May possibly also take a feed from nav data / air data for location purposes.

unless you are suggesting that the data link stream itself was some how compromised and insufficient or ineffective EMI/EMC interfered or was made to interfere with the FCS??

EMP would have also been monitored by many non Indian sensors around including space based ones and would have had a much wider footprint of damage, outing for example, cell towers, army comm systems and suchlike.

EMP, if looking at CTs, would account for the complete and silent downing of the Sukhoi without any distress or PAN / Mayday calls.

Aren't these guys supposed to carry ELTs??
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by kit »

To add to the medley of explanations. . The plane seem to have went down without any distress call means that almost all eletronics could have been jammed ??? .. unlikely given that it would need literally an EMP pulse wAve to interfere with ALL the electronics .. if it was only fbw the comms would still be operable ? .. did the pilots bail out before the crash ? ..
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by kit »

EMP can be undetected ( range ) but India has passive systems that do 24 hr monitoring. . Difficult to believe that actually .
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by darshhan »

Karan M wrote:Chdtak ji, in earlier soviet era fighters, the datalink allowed flight control. I dont know whether the polyot datalink in Su series allows that. In the former types of fighters, the cyber scenario is theoretically possible. Otherwise, it has to be focused EMP style weaponry, which us unlikely given how bulky they are to transport.
Karan, unlike cyber warfare concept which is fairly recent, Electronic warfare and EMP aspects are known for quite some time. Hence IMO it is very unlikely that a premier 4.5 G fighter like SU 30 will not have some sort of shielding against such attacks. I very much doubt that designers would have overlooked such an important aspect.

Furthermore the following BRF link states that the IAF itself is very active in hardening its strike fleet against emp attacks.

http://bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Today/Con ... ntury.html
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Re: Su-30: News and Discussion - August 9, 2014

Post by Austin »

I wonder why would we even discuss things like Chinese will shoot down our aircraft or there would be some kind of EMP or Cyber attack ...Seems like just an Alien Attack is missing from the discussion.

Accidents do happen , Sometimes the aircraft and pilot get lost without trace some time you can just find one of these , has happened in past and will happen in future , The mountain terrain , Weather can block emergency signal or you have to be very close to source to detect it.

Once Black Box is found IAF will do a professional investigation and find the root cause of the accident and take corrective action if required to do so. Like they did with such accidents in the past. Pilots account will also aid in.

Meanwhile we can just hope and pray the pilots are safe and they can come back home. I am sure their families might be going through a very tough time , Lets hope and pray our boys are safe.
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