Bukyanagandi
JF-Expert Member
- Jun 24, 2009
- 11,626
- 18,228
Scientist and researchers believes IRANIANS took control of a flying American drone by "hacking" into its GPS system by using "spoofing" technique where the drone mistakes the signal from hackers for the one sent from GPS satellites!!!! This method was unquestionably used by IRANIANS to bring down a US drone in IRAN in 2011.
A University of Texas at Austin team used this method and succeeded to take control of a flying drone by diverting the drone from its flying path during demostration.
Analysts say that the demo shows the potential danger of using drones. Drones are unmanned aircraft, often controlled from a hub located thousands of kilometres away. They are mostly used by the military in conflict zones such as Afghanistan.
They demonstrated the technique, using a mini helicopter drone, flown over a stadium in Austin, one official asked "What if you could take down one of these drones delivering FedEx packages and use that as your missile? "That's the same mentality the 911 attackers had."
Potential dangers
The spoofed drone used an unencrypted GPS signal, which is normally used by civilian planes, says Noel Sharkey, co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control.
"It's easy to spoof an unencrypted drone. Anybody technically skilled could do this - it would cost them some £700 for the equipment and that's it..
"It's very dangerous - if a drone is being directed somewhere using its GPS, [a spoofer] can make it think it's somewhere else and make it crash into a building, or crash somewhere else, or just steal it and fill it with explosives and direct somewhere.
"But the big worry is - it also means that it wouldn't be too hard for [a very skilled person] to work out how to un-encrypt military drones and spoof them, and that could be extremely dangerous because they could turn them on the wrong people.
A University of Texas at Austin team used this method and succeeded to take control of a flying drone by diverting the drone from its flying path during demostration.
Analysts say that the demo shows the potential danger of using drones. Drones are unmanned aircraft, often controlled from a hub located thousands of kilometres away. They are mostly used by the military in conflict zones such as Afghanistan.
They demonstrated the technique, using a mini helicopter drone, flown over a stadium in Austin, one official asked "What if you could take down one of these drones delivering FedEx packages and use that as your missile? "That's the same mentality the 911 attackers had."
Potential dangers
The spoofed drone used an unencrypted GPS signal, which is normally used by civilian planes, says Noel Sharkey, co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control.
"It's easy to spoof an unencrypted drone. Anybody technically skilled could do this - it would cost them some £700 for the equipment and that's it..
"It's very dangerous - if a drone is being directed somewhere using its GPS, [a spoofer] can make it think it's somewhere else and make it crash into a building, or crash somewhere else, or just steal it and fill it with explosives and direct somewhere.
"But the big worry is - it also means that it wouldn't be too hard for [a very skilled person] to work out how to un-encrypt military drones and spoof them, and that could be extremely dangerous because they could turn them on the wrong people.