How college students hijacked a government spy drone
By Tuan C. Nguyen | July 5, 2012, 5:20 AM PDT
A heated controversy is about to get even more controversial after a
group of college students figured out a way to hack a government
surveillance drone.
The experiment, carried out by a University of Texas team in
conjunction with the Department of Homeland security, used a method
called GPS-spoofing. Using about $1,000 worth of equipment, the
researchers were able to `spoof’ a GPS receiver, send false signals
and take control of the unmanned aircraft. To highlight just how
dangerous a hijacked aircraft can be, they nearly steered it into the
ground before a safety pilot with a radio control intervened to
prevent the drone from crashing.
The security of UAV technology has been a concern since military
officials discovered a computer virus had infected systems used to
control Predator and Reaper drones. Such fears were heightened when
Iran was able to capture the U.S. military’s most advanced
reconnaissance aircraft, a RQ-170 Sentinal last December. It’s
believed that the hackers brought down the drone by jamming GPS
navigational signals.
GPS spoofing, however, takes the threat to more sophisticated and
dangerous level since a hijacked drone can be manipulated to carry out
attacks or to steal gathered intelligence. It’s kind of like the robot
version of being possessed or mind control.
While UAVs, such the predator, have proven to be gamechangers in the
field of espionage and war on terror, they’re also been shown to be
potential safety and legal liability. On one hand, they’ve been
credited with taking out high-profile terrorist leaders such as second
ranking Al-Qaeda member Atiyah Abd al-Rahman and their American-born
operations chief Anwar al-Awlaki. On the homeland front, there have
even been cases where police departments have enlisted their help to
carry out investigations and arrests.
However, much of the worry centers around instances when the
technology falls in the wrong hands. Five months after Iran had the
Sentinel in their possession, news emerged that the Iranian government
had figured out a way to copy the technology. And with the FAA
recently deciding to open American airspace to commercial and
government-operated drones within three years, the possibility of
`re-possession’ has become cause for even greater concern.
`I’m worried about them crashing into other planes,’ Professor Todd
Humphreys, who lead the hacker team, told Fox News. `I’m worried about
them crashing into buildings. We could get collisions in the air and
there could be loss of life, so we want to prevent this and get out in
front of the problem.’
In the meantime, the department of homeland security is working to fix
some of the gaping holes in security and experiments like this will
help to expose and patch up problems before a truly bad incident
happens.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
