(Thumbnail image: US Air Force)

Have you ever considered downloading some cheap software to snag unprotected satellite feeds, watch movies and a little live TV without the hassle of all those cable bills?

Well, insurgents in Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq thought the same thing.

The U.S. military confirmed that insurgents intercepted video feeds from its unmanned Predator spy drones using $26 software, allowing them to monitor targets in Iraq.

We’re looking what it means when a bargain tool called SkyGrabber can trump pricey, sophisticated military technology, with perspectives from Übergizmo.com, Foreign Policy, CNN, and MSNBC’s "Morning Joe."

First, Übergizmo.com’s Hubert Nguyen points out that, technically, this really isn’t a hacking situation at all. That’s because the military didn’t protect its video feeds in the first place.

Nguyen suggests:

“…the security level could be raised significantly if the video was compressed and encrypted. All you need is to slow down any brute force cracking by hours or days, it would make the real-time information useless. I smell an upcoming drone upgrade.”

CNN’s Elaine Quijano says this isn't news to the military. She quotes a senior defense official as saying that the problem has been fixed. But:

“Yet another official said that this is sometimes a risk the military is willing to take because encrypting slows down the real-time video feed when multiple people need to watch simultaneously.”

This may be a case of underestimating the enemy writes Foreign Policy blogger Tom Rick. That insurgents could tap into military communications:

“Reminds me of Japanese hubris about their codes during World War II. If anything, I think the enemy, being smaller and less bureaucratic, tends to be more technologically agile than us.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asks, “If cable companies can prevent people from siphoning off its programming – why can’t the U.S. military?”

“Do they need to call HBO?  Because when I was growing up in upstate New York and was a teenager, I would always try to unscramble the HBO signal to be able to look at R-rated movies and I could never do it. HBO had this technology down in the disco era.”

So, do you think this security breach is a sign of things to come as more military operations move to cyberspace? Where would fixing the problem start?