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downside of things being "off the record" is this could be someone who oveheard two guys talking about something unrelated in the cafeteria, put "two and two" together, and picked up the phone. and since you can't get an official line ... you just run with the rumors and BS
This is the problem with rigid hierarchies. Everyone just passes the problem to someone else until the whole thing blows up. In this case, literally.
It seems to me that a more interesting question than "how did the malware get there?" is "why are they telling us that they found it?" Presumably the default thing to do under these circumstances would be to shut up about it, so the fact that they're broadcasting it to the whole world must mean something. In any case I wouldn't take any of the details at face value -- e.g. do they really not have any idea where it ca…
The official comment about the incident from the story is:
“We generally do not discuss specific vulnerabilities, threats, or responses to our computer networks, since that helps people looking to exploit or attack our systems to refine their approach,” says Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, a spokesman for Air Combat Command, which oversees the drones and all other Air Force tactical aircraft. “We invest a lot in protecting and monitoring our systems to counter threats and ensure security, which includes a comprehensive response to viruses, worms, and other malware we discover.”
Oh please tell me they aren't running windows. Just wait until the cops start using these in the USA for "crowd control" ugh.
"Oh please tell me they didn't connect directly to the internet".
Clarification: It's infecting the control station computers (which I believe are still Windows XP), not the UAVs themselves.
Unless you want to make the argument that it's far worse for the ground control systems to be continually reinfected, as they have access to the rest of the air-gapped private network as well.
Like hugh says, this doesn't add up at all. “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.” C'mon. You're the military. "It just keeps coming back?" So you decide to do a press release about it? Please. I wouldn't have whined like that when I was de-malwareing neigh…
There are hundreds of thousands of machines and millions of removable drives. Tracking down every last instance of a piece of malware and then dealing with it is quite hard at that scale. Usually they fall back on policy ("no usb/removable drives") They're handicapped by a need AND compulsion to use contractors for everything. Actual government employees didn't build drones; they were all developed and in many cases…
It's not that hard.
But anyway, my point was that I don't for a second believe that they're this incompetent, there must be other factors at play.
Though really the drones probably live in middle east so it'd be more like drones would go berserk in a US military bases in middle east and kill troops or attack innocent foreign civilians drumming up more anti American sentiment
"Americans use drone to assassinate Afgan president"
Of course, the source of the infection could be really nefarious. For example, imagine if someone replaced a keyboard with one that delivered a payload (trojan, keylogger, etc) when it is plugged into a computer's USB port? Then reformatting the hard drive does nothing because it will immediately infected again.
Oh please tell me they aren't running windows. Just wait until the cops start using these in the USA for "crowd control" ugh.