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UAV Operator Blames Hacking For Malfunction That Injured Triathlete
jaa101 (627731) writes "The owner of a drone which fell and reportedly hit an athlete competing in a triathlon in Western Australia's Mid West has said he believes the device was 'hacked' into."
From the article: "Mr Abrams said an initial investigation had indicted that someone nearby "channel hopped" the device, taking control away from the operator. ... Mr Abrams said it was a deliberate act and it would be difficult to determine who was responsible as something as common as a mobile phone could be used to perform a channel hop. The videographer added that there had been a similar incident when the drone was flown earlier in the day."
If it's subject to interference caused by someone broadcasting on the same channel and it can't compensate for it by switching channels or in some way authenticate it's control traffic, then it's a poorly designed toy and shouldn't be used commercially.
Reading the article:
"Operators of all unmanned drones used in a commercial capacity are required to be certified.
Neither Mr Abrams nor his business appear on the list of the 92 operators certified nationally."
So it sounds like he should be charged with some form of negligence if that is applicable to Australia. In the US the FAA would also probably be fining him.
Reminds me of a student, many years ago, who told me very seriously that hackers regularly broke into his home computer to mess with him. The evidence? Visual Studio (IIRC) kept changing between "inserting characters" and "overwriting characters" when he typed.
I asked if he might be accidentally hitting the Insert key. He had no idea what the Insert key did.
To his credit, when I explained, he acknowledged that this might have been the cause and perhaps there weren't any hackers in his computer after all.
This is the funny part "The videographer added that there had been a similar incident when the drone was flown earlier in the day."
If he drove a car, and he noticed that the brakes had failed earlier, but instead of getting it repaired, he started a new trip, eventually plowing into a group of people, he would be in jail...
I guess it's different if you are piloting a toy plane over a crowd.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I have been flying model airplanes for 50ish years now, and in that time, I have never ever heard of any RC pilot crashing due to pilot error. In every single case, it was "radio failure"
Multicopter pilot here. In short, it looks like the pilot was a hobbyist out of his depth and was performing dangerous maneuvers before any so-called hacking with equipment not meant for the job.
I don't know a lot about the specifics of the accident, but the multicopter that was involved in the accident was using a very outmoded form of technology to control the multicopter (wifi) rather than the far more reliable multichannel failsafe 2.4GHz DSMX systems that are in common use with bigger multicopters. While it may be possible to "hack" the signals controlling the 'copter, it's more likely that the control loss was due to RF interference, either by purpose or accident. I would imagine that a sporting event such as the one where the incident occurred would be awash in wifi signals from dozens if not hundreds of sources.
Secondly, the multicopter pilot was doing something that experienced pilots / cinematographers strongly avoid: flying directly over people. Even the best control systems and multicopters can malfunction, and hovering over a crowd is obviously a bad place for that to happen.
The type of multicopter also gives away the apparent lack of skills or experience of the pilot. Parrot AR 'copters are not professional-grade equipment and they are not devices that someone who earns a good bit of money from aerial filming would use.
(note: apologies for a double post, I forgot to log in to post this reply.)
Reads like bullshit anyway. Something went wrong, he throws up the "it wasn't me it must be those evil hackers" defence rather than accepting the blame for putting his device together poorly or letting it go out of range. There would be no way of knowing for sure if another device took control during the incident (because who would build that in to a home made UAV), so he *may* be telling the truth, but if it happened twice in one day either someone is out there deliberately hashing the channels to mess with everybody, or he just went out of range/did something wrong/etc.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
While learning to fly full scale airplanes it was drilled into me over and over, it is *always* the pilot/operators responsibility.
You either screwed up, or failed to ensure you were using reliable equipment, or failed to account for uncertainties in how you operate it.
Running what is essentially hobby hardware (radios, speed controls, batteries etc.) over top of people is just plain irresponsible.
"Oh, but I haven't crashed before."
Yeah, until you do.
Frequency hopping RC radios are pretty much the standard today among model plane enthusiasts. My dad happens to fly them and IIRC the freq hopping technology went into mainstream a good decade ago, as far as I know you can't even get "old school", fixed-channel controls anymore. It's also low-tech-person compatible technology (my dad most definitely is one), you simply press a button on both sender and receiver to "attune" them and you're set.
The technology is also quite tamper proof. Short of full frequency spectrum static flooding, there is very little you can do to disable communication between sender and receiver, let alone "take over" control of such a plane.
Of course, I don't know what the current tech standard for drones is like. I would have thought, though, that the standard would be higher than it is for toys.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Depending on the model of drone, NO IT IS NOT
The parrot AR drone in particular has no security, and you can't add any ontop of it (We've tried, and it wants to be a black box, and me trying is why posting as AC)
Many of the drones out there are NOT meant to be tinkered with, and I haven't yet seen one (non military) that has any level of encryption at all or really even authentication...
The first good drone that runs something like the Google Android that is going to be for ultra low energy use for smart watches, etc that is suppose to be coming out this summer... or something similar will probably be the first reasonably priced drone with any decent encryption, let alone tinkering
Mobile phone 'could have been used to channel hop'
Um, so pretty much doesn't that mean the drone was running on WiFi? So it was most likely simply interference, another device was trying to use the same channel has his device. Lesson 1: If you're going to operate a UAV over WiFi, check to make sure nothing else is on the channel. Lesson 2: If you're going to operate a UAV over WiFi, don't fly it where it could crash into somebody because you never know when another device is going to interfere with the channel you're using. Lesson 3: If something in the area interfered with it in the morning, don't fly it over humans without figuring out the interference.
He said a full check was conducted and the device was taken elsewhere for a test flight, but he said no issues were detected.
Which means whatever it was interfering with was in the area you were operating it in when it crashed, not the area where you tested it.
Mr Abrams said an initial investigation had indicted that someone nearby "channel hopped" the device, taking control away from the operator.
So somebody switched on their mobile hotspot and it was on the same channel as your UAV.
The videographer added that there had been a similar incident when the drone was flown earlier in the day.
Wow. Had this not happened I'd say the guy doesn't understand technical stuff (he's a photographer, not an IT guy) and that this was an unfortunate accident, but considering it happened earlier, he didn't consult with a technical person, and he still flew it over humans that's downright negligence and he should be responsible for the competitor's medical expenses, entry fee and any travel expenses. Perhaps even prosecuted for endangerment (either reckless endangerment or public endangerment, I think Australia has those laws similar to most US states).