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US Army Calls Halt On Use of Chinese-Made Drones By DJI (theverge.com)
Due to "an increased awareness of cyber vulnerabilities with DJI products," the U.S. Army is asking all units to discontinue the use of DJI drones. The news comes from an internal memo obtained by the editor of SUAS News. It notes that the Army had issued over 300 separate releases authorizing the use of DJI products for Army missions, meaning a lot of hardware may have been in active use prior to the memo, which is dated August 2nd, 2017. The Verge reports: SUAS News published a piece back in May of this year that made a number of serious accusations about data gathered by DJI drones. Author Kevin Pomaski starts out writing, "Using a simple Google search the data mined by DJI from your provided flights (imagery, position and flight logs) and your audio can be accessed without your knowing consent." However, he never follows up with evidence to demonstrate how this data becomes public or can be found through a Google search. Pomaski also point out, correctly, that when DJI users elect to upload data to their SkyPixel accounts through the DJI app, this data can be stored on servers in the U.S., Hong Kong, and China. This data can include videos, photos, and audio recorded by your phone's microphone, and telemetry data detailing the height, distance, and position of your recent flights. DJI provided the following statement to The Verge: "People, businesses and governments around the world rely on DJI's products and technology for a variety of uses including sensitive and mission critical operations. The Department of the Army memo even reports that they have 'issued over 300 separate Airworthiness Releases for DJI products in support of multiple organizations with a variety of mission sets.' We are surprised and disappointed to read reports of the U.S. Army's unprompted restriction on DJI drones as we were not consulted during their decision. We are happy to work directly with any organization, including the U.S. Army, that has concerns about our management of cyber issues. We'll be reaching out to the U.S. Army to confirm the memo and to understand what is specifically meant by 'cyber vulnerabilities.' Until then, we ask everyone to refrain from undue speculation."
The drones can't download anything to anywhere without you actually and in fact connecting the control software (DJI Go) to the Internet. While it likes to do that as a default (as does everything this side of your toaster) it's easy to block. There are a lot of people flying DJI stuff that purposely DON'T allow the software to update in order to keep DJI from screwing things up. They have a very checkered history when it comes to 'updates' (Oops, you crashed).
Just don't understand what the paranoia is. Surely, somebody in the Defense Department's Cyber vetted the software. Yes?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And we should thank PRESIDENT DONALD JOHN TRUMP for sticking it to teh commies!
TRUMP powa!
American companies invent their own evil.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm going to go ahead and speculate that if they don't know what 'cyber vulnerabilities' means, then they shouldn't be making drones.
Who the F didn't see this coming? A ChiCom psuedo-corporation providing spy equipment to the US and it "might" have a backdoor? LOL - USA has jumped the shark for sure.
I guess the DJI drones are cheap, easy to use and reliable, but I would have thought somebody who gives out the certifications to buy the units would have enough tech savvy to ask questions whether or not data from the drone was stored and where was it stored.
Anything with a camera that has internet access and could store data on the "Cloud" used by military personnel should be an immediate concern and should be investigated before allowing it to be purchased. I doubt it could affect operations in real time, but it could provide images of the faces of allied forces as well as a record of tactics used.
Somebody in the Army needs to understand where the certification process doesn't work and fix it.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The US Army is buying DJI hardware? This really blows my mind. How come the Airforce has not created the manpack combat quadcopter yet? If they have, why haven't they shared it with the Army?? What is the Army core of engineers doing while in garrison? Why on earth would any highly funded combat focused organization use consumer level quadcopter shit? I bet there are lower enlisted in barracks building their own racing quads right under their noses.
Nobody anywhere up the chain of command thought, "Gee, showing the enemy how to effectively use off-the-shelf and easily available high tech gear in combat operations might not be the best idea." ????
Why bother with microfilm when you can just amazon prime your very own unit?
I guess they are so busy fighting off the SJW onslaught over trans in the military they just don't have time to ask questions?
The military applications for quadcopters are damn near endless. Somebody is asleep at the wheel.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Honestly, I don't blame them...I was in the Army and frequently I was worried with some of the risk taking. Now that I'm out and working in IT I just had a customer purchase a "refurbished" laptop from China and we had to spend hours removing rootkits and trojans from it (maybe not the norm, but still worrying). It's simply not worth the risk, especially when dealing with something as important as defense.
Marky Mark Killed Jason Bourne!
the Second Cylon War comes to mind.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
step 1: sell drones to the US army
step 2: let the army arm them
step 3: update the firmware.
But one or the other is using Intel Realsense, which means it is running on an Intel based SoC, which should mean, as long as the OS only relies on local data transfer (and if not, demand a custom milspec operating system/source code, plus custom signing keys for military models if necessary...) then the only issues would be if anything was being transmitted in the clear, and/or if the device can be remotely exploited to provide either GPS information or a video feed which could be used to backtrace the unit's landing location and thus the location of part or all of the army unit utilizing them.
Really though, other than the 'buy american' crap, I don't see any reason they shouldn't be using them for recon until PROPER US Army issued models are available, just like in the past with personnel bringing body army or personal sidearms because the military bureaucracy wasn't issued what the soldiers needed in the field in a timely fashion. People often forget just how often soldiers have relied on third party equipment in the field because the military cannot/will not get the equipment they need out to them while the most heated parts of the war are still active.
that is spent on the war machine and use a few millions to create a company to build US made drones that can be sold to military and civilians.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
North Korea shoots off new USA hitting Missle
The USA test anti-missile weapon July 30 http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/30/...
China test out anti-satellite weapon Aug 2 http://freebeacon.com/national...
Now this...
It's not surprising that the US army uses DJI - They are cheap, and better than anything the US can manufacture at the price. Commonly there is no budget assigned to mini-drone use, and they solve a problem that is otherwise unsolvable.
Recently, I saw some operators using DJI drones, and I thought it would be rude to mention the security implication of where they had stored the drones so I didn't. Instead, I noted that they are going to need some expertise in that area in a few years when they do notice the security implications of using chinese recording devices in special forces compounds. So I started learning to "drone".
This means the US military will need drones, motors, flight controllers and ESCs sourced locally, eventually - As well as camera and gimbal technology. All areas in which the chinese are leading the US. And they aren't going to buy their minidrones for US$1Million from General Dynamics.
Maybe it's time some slashdotters realized this is a business opportunity, not a chance to make fun of the military.
and someone who has been designing 4-rotor helicopters since 2003, I would say the issue is probably related to DJI's choice of communications. The military really needs something better than hobby-grade RF technology for controlling these units from afar. Doesn't surprise me one bit that they got this far with a shit RF link though. Tax payer money doesn't require excellence in anything.
I don't understand why they would buy from DJI? DIY drones are more popular, cheaper, way more fun and flies just as well with opensource software/hardware. DJI needs to die already.
We're restricted to using these and other devices with our smart phones and there is no source code for the apps. They should release a full set of code for both any apps and the drones themselves. And we should have code for GNU/Linux and any other operating system one might want to build the software for. And it should be under a free software license of some sort. Fix this and we can begin to talk about security.
They fucking make the best commercial drones out there.
Now I really hope one day that one of our companies could catch up with DJI...
I mean a lot of China hate is justifiable, but DJI is one of the few that really impress.
This is what happens when you outsource all of your production / manufacturing to a foreign country. They end up producing the best hardware, and your own products can't compete. So their software goes into the firmware.
not anymore they don't.
>People, businesses and governments around the world rely on DJI's products and technology
Google and others are going to be paying attention this --The shrink-wrap/click-thru terms of service are barely legal to begin with, but start streaming operator A/V feeds (including more targets than just the original purchaser) across state and national boundaries and you WILL pay.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.