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Drone Maker Enforces No-Fly Zone Over DC, Hijacking Malware Demonstrated
An anonymous reader writes A recent incident at the White House showed that small aerial vehicles (drones) present a specific security problem. Rahul Sasi, a security engineer at Citrix R&D, created MalDrone, the first backdoor malware for the AR drone ARM Linux system to target Parrot AR Drones, but says it can be modified to target others as well. The malware can be silently installed on a drone, and be used to control the drone remotely and to conduct remote surveillance. Meanwhile, the Chinese company that created the drone that crashed on the White House grounds has announced a software update for its "Phantom" series that will prohibit flight within 25 kilometers of the capital.
Yes, people doing things that you are not doing yourself are always wrong and worthy of suspicion! #theamericanway
You can't "perfectly legally" fly an unmanned aircraft in an unmanned aircraft no-fly zone.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Also, as the drone has to compensate for wind, the drone can tell you what the wind strength is, so you don't have to estimate it from sighting a tree.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
why was the government employee even flying the drone at 3AM?
To be fair, when you're drunk at 3am flying a quadrocopter into the white house is one of the more sane choices people can make. At least he kept his pants on when he was doing it.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
In the Washington DC area, flights of any kind are and have been for many years very severely controlled. The DC Flight Restriction Zone (the "DC FRZ") is a 30-mile-wide circle in side of which it is illegal to fly any sort of remote control device of any kind at any altitude. So, yes, it sucks to be in the suburbs, seemingly a long way away from the sensitive downtown areas that include the White House, the Capital, Reagan Airport, the CIA campus, and all of those other high-profile places and people ... but, too bad! Federal offense with stiff fines and possible jail time if you're caught. That includes kids with $20 bought-it-at-the-mall 6" pink plastic helicopters playing around in their back yard. Yes, it's ridiculous.
On the other hand, it's a rare week when a trio of big helicopters doing runs like the one between the White House and Camp David don't go thundering over the tree tops of suburban Maryland. You can hear them coming quite a ways out, and if you were prepared, you could easily have a modest quadcopter or more substantial hexa up to over 1000' feet and be at the same altitiude as (or above) Marine One by the time it and its decoy siblings flew directly over your house on the way to a routine presidential golf outing. That's the sort of thing that has had the DoD, Secret Service, HSA, and FAA all uptight. Mind you, a person flying a more or less radar-invisible foam and plastic RC plane could have done that many years ago, too.
And so we have a 700 square mile area where flying a 3-pound DJI quadcopter is very, very illegal, and has been for years. That DJI is updating their GPS-aware flight control firmware to make it impossible to fly their devices in that area is a sign that they don't want their products to be simply banned outright. We are not at the sweet spot of rational rules and implementation on this one, not even close. And of course someone with true mal intent isn't going to be bothered by the rules or the firmware limitations anyway.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
True except for one issue. They are bloody noisy. So if any covert operation is the goal and you don't have the many MANY thousands of dollars needed for a drone capable of imaging from high altitudes with long focal lengths it will be painfully obvious that someone is looking.
A telescope however is often very discrete.
Are you an American? I ask because I cringe when I see this type of comment from a people who should understand what freedom and limited government is supposed to mean.
We don't use a metric of what I 'need' to do to determine what freedoms I should have. I don't need to purchase a 64 ounce mountain dew. That hardly means that I should be protected from doing so if I choose to. It's not exactly analogous to the drone situation, but it's a good representation of why the metric you propose is NOT one than anyone worried about personal freedom would ever support.
I don't need to make an argument of why I should be able to do something. You're trying to put the onus on the users, when it fact the onus is ALWAYS on the person trying to take away. Do we have systems in our cars that prevent us from crashing the gates at the White House? Do we have systems in our phones that prevent us from abusing the 911 emergency line?
I could continue, but frankly if you don't understand or agree with the argument it's pointless to go on. You comment regarding the United States being 'not so different' that China is fairly telling. It's not based in any semblence of reality. Censorship? Political arrests?
You argument is completely nonsensical on both counts.