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US Drones Infected with Virus: Malware Nightmare
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by Jordan Yerman | October 7, 2011 at 11:11 am
251 views | 7 Recommendations | 4 comments
US Keeps Flying Predator & Reaper Drones Despite Virus Infection
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US military drones (the ones that carry out air strikes and, you know, kill people) have been infected with a computer virus. The virus is believed to have been introduced via the swappable hard drives used to load drones' missions, but that is not known for sure.
The Department of Defense's Host-Based Security System discovered the virus two weeks ago, and admits that it doesn't know what the virus does (aside from keylogging), how it got introduced, or who created it. However, this has not stopped the US military from sending the drones out on missions.
These are the same drones that send back unencrypted footage, which Iraqi insurgents pluck at will. If your military drone's transmissions are less secure of those from my laptop, then you're doing it wrong.
“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”
Then you aren't "wiping it off", are you? On a normal day, these drones aren't exactly hack-proof. Now, though, they're actively compromised.
Creech GCS isn't panicking (see link above) , but the same may not be said for villagers in Pakistan.
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JoshArizona
Tempe, Arizona, United States
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (4)
at 23:11 on October 7th, 2011
Obviously there are a few smarter hackers than the smart ass dim wits at the DOD..
at 06:19 on October 8th, 2011
Smarter than Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, apparently. Then again, Scrivener may observe that this is a part of the psych ops campaingn to keep them in business.
at 07:19 on October 8th, 2011
Scrivener is being helped along on his own path of self destruction..
Not sure why the US is apparently so backwards when it comes to cybersecurity and national secrets in general..
at 15:46 on November 5th, 2011
what, no Skynet comments?
So, these things are running which operating system, exactly? This kind of hardware is supposed to be custom driven by private firmware/embedded OS, isn't it?
Wow.