US Drone Fleet Hit By Computer Virus

New submitter Golgafrinchan passes along this quote from an article at Wired: "A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America's Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones. The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military's Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech's computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military's most important weapons system.'"

Comments

Just to clarify

[Baloroth]

When they say the drones were infected, what they mean is that the computers controlling the drones (located in the US and which are, apparently, running Windows...) were infected with a keylogger, probably spread through flash drives. Whether this actually compromises security at all is unknown (keyloggers generally assume you are connected to the Internet, which these computers aren't.) They don't have much security on the drone computers because they aren't hooked up to the Internet, and they would (apparently) rather educate their users than bother with antivirus, for whatever reason (although they do have a security system on the network which detected the virus. I would imagine it also should have stopped the virus).

Re:duh

[Aighearach]

Hell, in Linux a simple rootkit can work just by editing the system commands like ls.

That is as simple to detect as installing TripWire.

Re:Spread by removable drives? How hard is this?

[mclearn]

Actually, TFA believes that the vector was a removable drive by which they periodically update their map collections.

Use of the drives is now severely restricted throughout the military. But the base at Creech was one of the exceptions, until the virus hit. Predator and Reaper crews use removable hard drives to load map updates and transport mission videos from one computer to another. The virus is believed to have spread through these removable drives. Drone units at other Air Force bases worldwide have now been ordered to stop their use.

Re:Military Intelligence

[Jeng]

They are not hacking the control software, all they are doing is receiving an unencrypted video feed.

You do not get anywhere close to being able to hack a drone just because you receive something similar to a TV station. You wouldn't be able to hack a TV station though a TV signal and you can't hack a drone though it's video feed.