I wrote about this in 2023. Here’s the story: > Three Dutch security analysts discovered the vulnerabilities­—five in > total—­in a European radio standard called TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), > which is used in radios made by Motorola, Damm, Hytera, and others. The > standard has been used in radios since the ’90s, but the flaws remained > unknown because encryption algorithms used in TETRA were kept secret until > now. There’s new news: > In 2023, Carlo Meijer, Wouter Bokslag, and Jos Wetzels of security firm > Midnight Blue, based in the Netherlands, discovered vulnerabilities in > encryption algorithms that are part of a European radio standard created by > ETSI called TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), which has been baked into radio > systems made by Motorola, Damm, Sepura, and others since the ’90s. The flaws > remained unknown publicly until their disclosure, because ETSI refused for > decades to let anyone examine the proprietary algorithms...

You can read the details of Operation Spiderweb elsewhere. What interests me are the implications for future warfare: > If the Ukrainians could sneak drones so close to major air bases in a police > state such as Russia, what is to prevent the Chinese from doing the same with > U.S. air bases? Or the Pakistanis with Indian air bases? Or the North Koreans > with South Korean air bases? Militaries that thought they had secured their > air bases with electrified fences and guard posts will now have to reckon with > the threat from the skies posed by cheap, ubiquitous drones that cFan be > easily modified for military use. This will necessitate a massive investment > in counter-drone systems. Money spent on conventional manned weapons systems > increasingly looks to be as wasted as spending on the cavalry in the 1930s...

Interesting story: > USS Stein was underway when her anti-submarine sonar gear suddenly stopped > working. On returning to port and putting the ship in a drydock, engineers > observed many deep scratches in the sonar dome’s rubber “NOFOUL” coating. In > some areas, the coating was described as being shredded, with rips up to four > feet long. Large claws were left embedded at the bottom of most of the > scratches. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Interesting article—with photos!—of the US/UK “Combined Cipher Machine” from WWII.