Holy crow (if this is accurate)! This article from the Register is something else. Hezbollah fighters were able to intercept Israeli communications due to the fact that “troops in combat might sometimes make mistakes in following secure radio procedures”.
Claims that Hezbollah fighters were able to use this intelligence to get some intelligence on troop movement and supply routes are plausible, at least to the layman, but ought to be treated with an appropriate degree of caution as they are substantially corroborated by anonymous sources.
“We were able to monitor Israeli communications, and we used this information to adjust our planning,” a Hezbollah commander told Newsday.
Although Hezbollah was unable to intercept Israeli communications at will, it did gain intelligence that allowed it to co-ordinate counter-offensives against Israeli attacks.
Proper procedures are important and this case helps to illustrate why. While things can/may/do happen in the heat of battle, this type of misstep could have easily led to more causualties.
[tags]Israel, Hezbollah, War, Radio Codes, Cracking[/tags]
Schneier had a good point on this. It seems unlikely to be true, because if it was, then Hezbollah would not be surrendering this advantage by reporting it. It would be like a British commander in WWII saying to a newspaper reporter “We were able to sink that sub because we’ve cracked the German naval codes.”
On the other hand, if it is not true, or maybe they tried to do this but found it very limited in usefulness, then it would be worthwhile to make the claim for the sake of the PR value of ‘pulling one over’ on the Israeli army .
I agree that this is more than likely little more than spin. You raise a very valid point. Had the German Enigma and the Japanese Purple compromises been made public they would have taken steps to change the codes or at least engage in a disinformation campaign.
For those of you who may not have seen it here is the link for Bruce Schneier’s posting.