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How To Hijack a Drone For $400 In Less Than an Hour
Trailrunner7 writes "The skies may soon be full of drones – some run by law enforcement agencies, others run by intelligence agencies and still others delivering novels and cases of diapers from Amazon. But a new project by a well-known hacker Samy Kamkar may give control of those drones to anyone with $400 and an hour of free time. Small drones, like the ones that Amazon is planning to use to deliver small packages in short timeframes in a few years, are quite inexpensive and easy to use. They can be controlled from an iPhone, tablet or Android device and can be modified fairly easily, as well. Kamkar, a veteran security researcher and hacker, has taken advantage of these properties and put together his own drone platform, called Skyjack. The drone has the ability to forcibly disconnect another drone from its controller and then force the target to accept commands from the Skyjack drone. All of this is done wirelessly and doesn't require the use of any exploit or security vulnerability."
For something like Amazon's purported drones... all you'd have to do is to hardcode the delivery address and HQ into the drone before flying, and make sure it doesn't accept any incoming signals by turning the wireless off. Now, if we want to talk about trying to get the drone's GPS systems confused, that would be something else! (Actually I'm still wondering if the drone would be smart enough to land on pavement or miss entirely and drop packages on a customer roof or balcony.)
READY.
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A security vulnerability implies that at some level, there had to have been the faintest vague attempt at being secure.
He exploited a vulnerability, to be sure, but he seems uncomfortable calling it a security vulnerability.
John