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New Attack Can Seize Control of Drones
A new radio transmitter "seizes complete control of nearby drones as they're in mid-flight," reports Ars Technica:
From then on, the drones are under the full control of the person with the hijacking device. The remote control in the possession of the original operator experiences a loss of all functions, including steering, acceleration, and altitude... Besides hijacking a drone, the device provides a digital fingerprint that's unique to each craft. The fingerprint can be used to identify trusted drones from unfriendly ones and potentially to provide forensic evidence for use in criminal or civil court cases...
Hijacks could allow law-enforcement officers to safely seize control of vulnerable drones that are endangering or interfering with first responders. The hacks could also provide ordinary citizens with a less-draconian way of disabling a drone they believe is impinging on their property or privacy... A patchwork of federal and state laws makes it unclear if even local authorities have the legal authority to shoot or hack an aircraft out of the sky.
XKCD once proposed solving the problem with butterfly nets, but instead this new attack is exploiting unencrypted DSMx radio signals.
Hijacks could allow law-enforcement officers to safely seize control of vulnerable drones that are endangering or interfering with first responders. The hacks could also provide ordinary citizens with a less-draconian way of disabling a drone they believe is impinging on their property or privacy... A patchwork of federal and state laws makes it unclear if even local authorities have the legal authority to shoot or hack an aircraft out of the sky.
XKCD once proposed solving the problem with butterfly nets, but instead this new attack is exploiting unencrypted DSMx radio signals.
...this new attack is exploiting unencrypted DSMx radio signals.
I can't believe I'm saying this but thank you editor, everyone reporting on this fails to mention this detail. Nothing really to see here.
DSMX is Spektrum. They are a large part of "drone" usage mostly because of the commercial DJI market but hardly the only. The "fingerprinting" they are talking about is the model ID. DSMX reuses a small set of ID's and it's possible to get collisions. They are not unique identifiers.
I wonder how they're bypassing the other radio's signals. Probably by blasting a very high strength signal which is illegal in the Part 15 FCC rules.
There are a ton of radio protocols out there, many of which are better than DSMX.
A story about a high tech way to take something away from its user, and only three paragraphs in, we're told how great it will be for law enforcement.
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
If this hacking remote/tool is less expensive than say $750? As an owner of a couple drones that exceed that price....I would be furious if some theif decided to hijack one of mine inflight. Drone thievery could very soon become big business if a tool like this becomes wildly available. Consequently it would likely also but a halt to the growth of the legal market if people become worried someone will steal their expensive drone.
This could be a money maker for an enterprising small-time criminal. Look for a surge of drones for sale on eBay. Missing remote controller, charger, and extra batteries. Excellent condition! For parts or fix.
This hack cuts both ways: police can take control of people's drones and people can take control of police drones. Yep, that overpriced octocopter the cops bought can now be hijacked with ease.
I got a feeling this is going to get fixed for all the $1000+ drones.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The wireless protocol is not used by DJI, so my drones are safe from would be thieves. For now anyway. I don't know how many companies use DSMx, but I suspect the numbers will drop precipitously.
This nice thing about the old 72mhz and newer DSM-based RC control schemes is that they have really, really low latency. There was no need for encryption in the good old days. But now, we have high-speed, low power chips that could handle encryption on both ends of the data stream without too much extra latency. There is not a great deal of data that needs to be moved so, the load on the encrypt-er and the fattening of the data pipe should be modest.
If someone were to hijack a 'good' drone and use it for bad purposes (ie: send it to the airport to interfere with real air traffic, etc) would the registered owner of the drone be held responsible? Could you get a flock of drones and run them as a swarm to attack a target?
That's my current thinking. Everything needs to be encrypted, and everything needs to be protected from Man-In-The-Middle. There's really no other option.
I'm trying to get this as the policy at work, but it's a struggle.
Wow, what a puzzling post; what does your 56 milli hertz antenna look like?
And although it's been over 40 years since I had my ticket, I'm 99% sure that 56 MHz has never been and 100% sure it isn't an amateur allocation in the US; what country allocates it to Amateur Radio Services?
Hijacks could allow law-enforcement officers to safely seize control of vulnerable drones that are endangering or interfering with first responders.
Imagine the historical impact if this very important footage of protests in Hong Kong, Macedonia, and Greece was seized by authorities.
It is bad enough that authorities are using Stingrays to gather contact information from the phones of those who participate in protests. It is bad enough that constant, aerial,high resolution footage of these peaceful protesters is being used to track them as they go home. The tactics that police use to control the population are one step short of the tactics that are used in modern warfare.
That works against 99.9% of the drones and is actually much more fun than a stupid "mine is bigger than yours" radio transmitter.
If this hijacking tool comes into use, surely manufacturers of drone controls will start encrypting the signals. Its not like the technology for doing this is difficult or unfamiliar.
Does this technology of Drone exist ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...