Drones vulnerable to terrorist hijacking

In a "no duh" moment researchers are claiming that military drones can be hijacked and made to do anything the hijacker wants including taking out any number of targets including people.

“Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a plane,” Humphreys told Fox News.

In other words, with the right equipment, anyone can take control of a GPS-guided drone and make it do anything they want it to.

“Spoofing” is a relatively new concern in the world of GPS navigation. Until now, the main problem has been GPS jammers, readily available over the Internet, which people use to, for example, hide illicit use of a GPS-tracked company van. It’s also believed Iran brought down that U.S. spy drone last December by jamming its GPS, forcing it into an automatic landing mode after it lost its bearings.

There are several things that a drone needs to fly and, much like with a human driven aircraft, if any of those systems fails then the mission is in danger.  What is being discussed in the news article is the equivalent of placing blinders on the "eyes" of the drone and causing it to become confused.  I cannot be certain but communication with the drone is likely encrypted over a secure channel but who is to say that with enough data it cannot be hacked.

These days you can hack a WEP key in a matter of seconds and WPA can fall in a matter of hours.  This isn't to say military drones fly via wifi but with enough data you can crack the code.  That is the main reason drones fly with a program and not so much with human interaction, remove the ability to run the program and you kill the device.

Related Web URL: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/25/drones-v...