How good is the encryption on military satellites?

[Born2bwire]

I knew it.. Rubycon isn't a person, she's/it's an advanced AI database who is now trying to pull a skynet and break into places she's not supposed to be.


quick, pull her off the power grid before it's too late, lol

Nah, she knows the answer. She's just feigning ignorance in a bid to pass the Turing test.

 

[Rubycon]

It's nearly impossible to break any military encryption as the most important part, the keymat, is changed daily, weekly, monthly, bi-annually or annually depending on the system.

<- used to work on the very system mentioned in the OP @ the five-sided fistagon.

Nearly impossible does not imply impossible. (nothing is impossible)

Even if 24 hour period on the tightest system seems rather loose in the days of multiple petaflop cracking.

LOL at (other) replies.

:whiste:

Only in OT...

 

[Sea Moose]

All encryption can be cracked by a tom cruise montage.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Okay, I looked into it. The military doesn't encrypt at all. They just use atrocious spelling and grammar that would make ATOT blush.

 

[Praetor]

It's nearly impossible to break any military encryption as the most important part, the keymat, is changed daily, weekly, monthly, bi-annually or annually depending on the system.

<- used to work on the very system mentioned in the OP @ the five-sided fistagon.

Tell that to Gary McKinnon. link

 

[biggestmuff]

Nearly impossible does not imply impossible. (nothing is impossible)

Even if 24 hour period on the tightest system seems rather loose in the days of multiple petaflop cracking.

LOL at (other) replies.

:whiste:

Only in OT...

I only said 'nearly impossible', but it would be impossible due to the various things that would need to occur.

The uplinks to the satellite from the ground station and the downlinks to the ground station from the satellite are encrypted. I've never worked satellite so I don't know what encryptor is being used. All traffic riding those links are encrypted. Besides the encryption you'd need various other components to demux the individual circuits from the satellite link. Even if you had all of the proper equipment you'd still need the correct configurations and setting for the equipment. Even if you had all of that, you'd still need the correct keymat, which, as I said earlier changes periodically. Nearly impossible.

 

[biggestmuff]

Tell that to Gary McKinnon. link

Rooting some unclassified systems is nothing.

 

[esun]

Just trying to acquire the signal would be extremely difficult. I'd imagine that most if not all secure satellite communications systems use some type of spread spectrum techniques to obscure the signal. On top of that I'm sure you have encryption of the actual data itself, which means that even if acquire it you still don't really have anything.

 

[biggestmuff]

Just trying to acquire the signal would be extremely difficult. I'd imagine that most if not all secure satellite communications systems use some type of spread spectrum techniques to obscure the signal. On top of that I'm sure you have encryption of the actual data itself, which means that even if acquire it you still don't really have anything.

That date is encrypted upon transmission. That's how it is on the majority of the classified systems. The DoD is just now beginning to secure data at rest, but that's mainly for their UNCLASSIFIED/FOUO systems.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Nearly impossible does not imply impossible. (nothing is impossible)

Even if 24 hour period on the tightest system seems rather loose in the days of multiple petaflop cracking.

LOL at (other) replies.

:whiste:

Only in OT...

It isn't so much a question of possibilities but probabilities. The state of the art is well known, and therefore the standard isn't what could theoretically happen, but what could be done with today's techniques and equipment. It isn't likely that someone has created a complete quantum computer in their basement.

As has been pointed out, the sensitivity of the data determines how actively it's managed. If it seems that pentaflop cracking is an issue, then the standards will be raised. It's a dynamic process.

Now as far as the specifics go if I told you then... well you know

 

[Locut0s]

I'm sure it's way better but from a computational standpoint it needn't be any better than say AES 256 or so.

 

[Godsend1]

Here's something else to think about:

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...ng-in-space-for-the-us-military-58228057.html

The satellite IS-14 has just been released for use after completing IOT(in orbit testing).

 

[irishScott]

The average user can get a Serpent-TwoFish-AES cascading algorithm for free via Truecrypt, and I'd be extremely surprised if anyone outside of a few major government organizations could crack it given a strong password. I imagine said government agencies pay for something a lot better.

 

[PokerGuy]

I'm sure they are using one of those fancy transposition riddle thingies where you take the first letter and move it to the last letter. Ha, nobody will be able to hack that!

 

[sourceninja]

If I have learned anything from the TV, it is that there is no such thing as encryption. It can all be cracked in a matter of seconds by randomly typing on your keyboard or moving things via a touch screen.

 

[JTsyo]

I'm sure they are using one of those fancy transposition riddle thingies where you take the first letter and move it to the last letter. Ha, nobody will be able to hack that!

I hear they just use Navajo for a code.

 

[Engineer]

<----- Highly Technical is that way! :biggrin:

 

[Gibsons]

It's easy, you just create a GUI interface using Visual Basic. Everyone knows this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU