Broadband Tech > Security > Security > Drones vulnerable to terrorist hijacking, researchers say

reply to StuartMW

Re: Drones vulnerable to terrorist hijacking, researchers say

reply to StuartMW
This is to the thread and all the posts in general.

Excellent discussion and debate by different posters.

Overall though it seems to me that collectively the posts are making the facts more complicated and convoluted.

The whole technological story is that the drones being talked about are guided by controllers using civilian GPS tracking and guidance.

The "hijackers" can gain control of the drones without the controllers knowing it and steer it to anywhere they want, again without the drones genuine controller knowing it. End of story.

As an addendum: There was talk about tracking or locating the drones on radar. Between the size of the drone and it's profile painting it with civilian radar isn't especially effective which is why planes are required to have transponders.

reply to StuartMW

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"GPS is not the primary navigation sensor for the RQ-170... The vehicle gets its flight path orders from an inertial navigation system".[16] Inertial navigation continues to be used on military aircraft despite the advent of GPS because GPS signal jamming and spoofing are relatively simple operations.[17]

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Dan Goure, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, stated the largely intact airframe ruled out the possibility of an engine or navigational malfunction: "Either this was a cyber/electronic warfare attack system that brought the system down or it was a glitch in the command-and-control system."

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reply to NormanS

reply to StuartMW
Texas Students Hijack a U.S. Government Drone in Midair (Popsci)

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The U.S. government, understandably, doesn't want its drone technology to fall out of the sky and into other peoples' laps. But being able to hijack a drone and control it? That's even worse. And a team of researchers has done it for 1,000 bucks.

The University of Texas at Austin team successfully nabbed the drone on a dare from the Department of Homeland Security. They managed to do it through spoofing, a technique where a signal from hackers pretends to be the same as one sent to the drone's GPS.

We've seen spoofing before; it was reportedly used to bring down the drone that crashed in Iran last year.

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reply to StuartMW
GPS Hijacking: Team of U.S. Faculty, Students Take Control of Drone (PJ Media)

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On May 9, a Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 slammed into Mount Salak in Indonesia, killing all 45 people on board. The plane, a demonstration version of the Superjet series, was on a promotion tour, carrying journalists and VIPs for a planned 30-minute flight. Alexander Yablonstev, an experienced pilot, was said to be familiar with local terrain. According to Travel Daily News, the air traffic control tower (ATC) did not realize that the plane was missing until at least 20 minutes after the crash. Recordings show that a flight request made by pilot Yablonstev was neither acknowledged nor answered by the ATC.

While the Indonesian and Russian governments have drawn no official conclusions, Russian media is promoting the idea that the Superjet 100 was brought down by “electronic jamming” by Americans at the Indonesian airport. It is, they opine, a case of Western “industrial espionage.” Komsolskaya Pravda, once the voice of the Communist youth movement and now Russia’s top tabloid, quoted an unnamed general of the GRU (Russian military intelligence) on the subject and reinforced the “theory” with comments from Sukhoi officials.

Realistically, it is hard to argue that the Superjet posed a competitive threat to the United States. There is only one American commercial aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, and it helped Sukhoi with the Superjet design. More likely, Sukhoi feared its first venture in commercial aviation would collapse if a flaw in the aircraft caused the crash.

But could the plane’s instruments have been jammed? The Superjet has a modern glass cockpit in which instruments are displayed on computer screens rather than the old-fashioned “steam” gauges. These systems depend in part on guidance and control systems, including GPS. Much to the consternation of the FAA — as well to the FBI and other intelligence agencies — commercial aircraft GPS guidance systems have been affected by electronic “events,” including jamming.

Closer to home, an FAA report released in 2011 covered the topic of “GPS Privacy Jammers and RFI at Newark,” regarding jamming of the GBAS system at the Newark International Airport.

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