Did Hezbollah use SIGINT against Israel?

http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition
/stories/ny-wocode184896831sep18,0,7091966,print.story

That isn't supposed to be possible these days...  (I regard
it as more
likely that they were doing traffic analysis and
direction-finding than
actually cracking the ciphers.)

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbi
a.edu/~smb

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| http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition
/stories/ny-wocode184896831sep18,0,7091966,print.story
| 
| That isn't supposed to be possible these days...  (I
regard it as more
| likely that they were doing traffic analysis and
direction-finding than
| actually cracking the ciphers.)
Newspaper reports have claimed that many troops were sent
into the
field with old equipment - including in particular
10+-year-old
communications equipment.  Something that was fielded in
1996 was
likely designed using the technology of the early '90's. 
Portable
communications equipment built with that technology is
probably not
secure today.
							-- Jerry


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On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition
/stories/ny-wocode184896831sep18,0,7091966,print.story
>
> That isn't supposed to be possible these days...

It is not clear that with modern technology interception is
impossible, at least during Second Gulf War the reports
about
SIGINT against US were quite convincing:

 <http://www.google.com/search?q=iraq+radio+intercept>


> (I regard it as more
> likely that they were doing traffic analysis and
direction-finding than
> actually cracking the ciphers.)

IIUC, spread-spectrum communication is not much stronger
than the
background noise, and thus the traffic analysis is not that
easy
either.

My guess that at least some information was leaked due to
cellular
phones (the solders were routinely calling their families).

"Besides radio transmissions, the official said
Hezbollah also
 monitored cell phone calls among Israeli troops. But cell
phones are
 usually easier to intercept than military radio, and
officials said
 Israeli forces were under strict orders not to divulge
sensitive
 information over the phone."

Even if one don't care what was said over the phone, a lot
of
information can be extracted from mere location of a phone
(especially, if one knows the owner of each phone):

"Israeli officials said the base also had detailed
maps of northern
 Israel, lists of Israeli patrols along the border and cell
phone
 numbers for Israeli commanders."

-- 
Regards,
ASK

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     --
Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
 > That isn't supposed to be possible these days...  (I
 > regard it as more likely that they were doing traffic
 > analysis and direction-finding than actually cracking
 > the ciphers.)

Ciphers cannot be cracked when used correctly.  However,
military cipher procedures are often highly user
unfriendly, and in consequence seldom used correctly.
Come to think of it, we have the same problem on the
internet.

     --digsig
          James A. Donald
      6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
      c/n1W5sl/AyzClfoXunWJSJOHHUhW1DmgUQG8ZC3
      4TpD3sBZLjv0gUHYB2nlyeJ6n8hZV0ZQ0ET1/zHLL

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On 9/20/06, Leichter, Jerry <leichter_jerroldemc.com> wrote:
> Newspaper reports have claimed that many troops were
sent into the
> field with old equipment - including in particular
10+-year-old
> communications equipment.

The Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System was
designed in the 80's:


http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/sincgars.htm

I don't know the hop frequency, but it's probably smaller
than modern
standards (could
possibly be followed with real-time tracking), it probably
uses a
manually-entered seed to
generate a hop sequence, the PRNG that stretches the seed is
probably
not secure any
more, and the input space is probably searchable by now in a
reasonable amount of time.

Further, once broken with some expensive hardware (maybe a
custom-designed SIGINT SDR), they could program much cheaper
units to
follow the sequence until the Israelis
re-keyed.

Just my total guess.
-- 
"On the Internet noone knows you're a dog - except
Bruce Schneier."
Unix "guru" for rent or hire -><- http://www.li
ghtconsulting.com/~travis/
GPG fingerprint: 9D3F 395A DAC5 5CCC 9066  151D 0A6B 4098
0C55 1484

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