[Cryptography] improved identification of non-targets

[John-Mark Gurney]

John Denker via cryptography wrote this message on Sat, Jan 11, 2020 at 23:13 -0700:
> Hi Folks --
> 
> There have been outrageously many incidents of people shooting
> down airliners without really meaning to.  This looks partly
> analogous if not identical to a classical crypto problem,
> namely identification and authentication.  Heretofore it has
> been handled very badly.
> 
> 1) The term IFF (identification friend of foe) is a gross
> misnomer:
>  *) A favorable result from the IFF system identifies a
>   friendly military aircraft.
>  *) The only other result is a non-result which could be:
>   -- an out-and-out foe,
>   -- a neutral,
>   -- a friendly non-military aircraft,
>   -- or even a friendly warplane with a broken or
>    misconfigured transponder.
> 
> 2) There exists such a thing as "non cooperative target
>  identification" but that is very much the answer to the
>  wrong question.  Airliners are not targets, and more
>  importantly, they would cooperate if given half a chance.
>  So the question is, why are they not given the chance?
> 
> 3) To ask the same question in a slightly different way:
>  Can we provide airliners with IFF functionality?  What
>  would that involve?

This already exists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe

Most of the cases (all?) of the civilian airliners that have
been shot down in the last 30 years or so have had functional
IFF systems, the problem is the systems around the missiles
(including humans) that are the problem.

Flight 655 had properly squawked a civilian aircraft from the
existing IFF system.
 
> ===========
> 
> Bottom line:  There's obviously a problem here.  How do
> we understand the problem?  Is it fixable?

Only when people are more careful and do their jobs.  Example, after
flight 655, war ships were finally given the equipment to be able to
monior civilian frequencies.  Also, the computer didn't have the
commercial airline schedules, though in the case of 655, it was 27
minutes late leaving, but still might have helped.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."