Hackers' Next Target: Police Drones

Pricier means more secure, right? Non exactly. A security researcher has found that many expensive law drones are vulnerable to hacks.

RSA 2022 bug art At San Francisco's RSA briefing this week, Nils Rodday showed off flaws in a $35,000 drone's radio connection, opening the device to hackers more than than a mile away.

Co-ordinate to Wired, Rodday was able to have full control of a authorities-ready quadcopter using only a laptop and cheap radio bit. But whatever hacker who can opposite-engineer the drone's flight software tin can accept control of the device, sending new navigation commands and blocking those from the bodily operator.

Rodday, an IT security consultant with IBM Federal republic of germany, conducted his drone inquiry equally a graduate pupil at the Academy of Twente in the Netherlands and Academy of Trento in Italy. The results were published in a final projection called "Exploring Security Vulnerabilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles."

Sworn to secrecy by the drone manufacturer, Rodday did not disembalm the specific machine he tested, or who sells it. Only he did reveal two serious security oversights: poorly encrypted Wi-Fi connecting the drone to its user, and an even less-secure radio protocol.

The unprotected drone is an easy target for a human-in-the-heart attack conducted by someone who could be more a mile away, sending commands to reroute or reprogram the flight auto.

"If y'all retrieve every bit an attacker, someone could exercise this only for fun, or likewise to crusade harm or to brand a mess out of a daily surveillance process," Rodday told Wired. "You can send a control to the camera, to turn it to the wrong side so they don't receive the desired information…or you can steal the drone, all the equipment attached to information technology, and its information."

The unidentified manufacturer has been alerted to the security flaws, and intends to fix the problem in its adjacent model, the mag said. Unfortunately, the same patch cannot be applied to those drones already flying around. What'south worse, Rodday's discovery is probable non confined to just one unmanned aerial vehicle; it could extend to commercial quadcopters, also.

In December 2022, hacker and security analyst Samy Kamkar built SkyJack—a Parrot AR UAV equipped with a Raspberry Pi, engineered to autonomously seek out, hack, and wirelessly take over other drones within Wi-Fi altitude.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.