Interesting article in the WSJ recently about a tool called Skygrabber that insurgents are using to intercept video feeds from US drones over Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course the attention has overwhelmed the skygrabber.com website and is a lesson on being ready for your moment when it arrives but, the real issue here is one of security and how commercial enterprises are thriving on attacking vulnerabilities in networks and making a profit in doing so.
Here is a quote from Andrew Solonikov, one of the software’s developers.
"It (the software) was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the Internet -- no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content," he said by email from Russia.
Um, last time I checked, “free, legal content” can be downloaded and does not need to be intercepted. Intercepted is what you do when others own the content and you want to steal it. Looks like Andrew and friends don’t mind stealing from musicians, movie producers and software companies but, don’t want to mess with the military.
Any bets that the US intel community is capable of monitoring who downloads this software?
No comments:
Post a Comment