Hacking Drones. Almost Nothing is Safe.

So you’re traveling to your destination when a UAV drone grabs your attention. While trying to mind your own business the drone begins to fall, losing altitude and crashes to the ground. Malware, it appears, is no longer limited to just PC’s, mobile devices and networks. Now that hackers have developed malware designed to infiltrate these devices, you can add drones to that growing list.

While drones are the common name for UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), most are sold by retailers to hobbyists, photography and Surveillance companies.  Drones are basically electronic flying computers with autonomous flight features, global positioning, and recording cameras. A security researcher named Rahul Sasi, claims to provide backdoor access to the software of a quadrocopter Parrot AR Drone. A malware infected drone (Maldrone) can interact with the device sensors silently allowing the hacker to control the drone remotely.

Hackers using spoofing can change a drones path, stop the rotors and also cut power. According to Sasi, Maldrone can be installed over a wireless connection without the pilot’s knowledge. The ramifications are staggering if an Maldrone infected aircraft engines cut out over a crowd. In the future, this malware could also affect a retailer using target delivery drones rerouting expensive goods.

Hackers are not the only worry, a Boeing subsidiary named Insitu also wants to use drones as a tool to infect PC’s

 We see potential in integrating your Wi-Fi hacking capability into an airborne system and would be interested in starting a conversation with one of your engineers to go over, in more depth, the payload capabilities including the detailed size, weight, and power specs of your Galileo System.

Leaked Hacking Team emails revealed the company asked for assistance in integrating a tactical network injector. The portable device could target open Wi-Fi networks, intercept unencrypted traffic and install malicious code.

 In this day and age, there’s always someone around to spoil everyone else’s fun. And an unsecured internet connection is one of the easiest points to infect your devices with malware. In controlling a drone
from a smartphone, mobile device, tablet or computer,  it is imperative to have real time anti-virus installed. This, at the very least, can stop infections from causing issues. A secondary tier of protection is subscribing to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. This will protect the controlling pilot’s internet connection from hackers.

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