Thursday, December 17, 2009
Be the first on your block to control the world—hack a drone
by Larry Geller
That insurgents have figured out how to download video feeds from US drones does not surprise me. Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones (WSJ, 12/17/2009) describes how cheap software was used to intercept video taken by US Predator drones. The video was found on captured laptops.
The video data was unencrypted. Silly military. Did they really think that no one would try to get it? What does surprise me is that insurgents haven’t caught on to the need to encrypt data on their laptops. If you have sensitive data, any kid knows to encrypt and hide it. Oh, well. They’ll get smarter. The question is, will the US military?
How long will it be before someone figures out the command stream going to a drone? If that’s possible, it will happen. And then watch out. Watch for drones in the skies over New York.
Short of co-opting a military drone, how long can it be before others besides the US build and deploy drones?
(Thanks to Mike Reitz for pointer to this story)
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