Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer • Hacker News Board

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#21

Post by GoodIntentions » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 7:55 PM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #7

nyellin wrote: post #4

Each one of these could be a potential missile used against us. This seems to be exaggerated. Wouldn't you need a drone on American soil, already right next to the target, in order to crash it by sending falsified GPS coordinates?

Unless one gets downed abroad and reprogrammed.

ahem:

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20111204/DEFSECT01/112040...

edit: ( I think the real concern in this situation would be reverse engineering with an eye to finding vulnerabilities to be exploited in other drones, not so much reprogramming the one and only they have )

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#22

Post by asynchronous13 » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 7:57 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #14

nyellin wrote: post #4

Each one of these could be a potential missile used against us. This seems to be exaggerated. Wouldn't you need a drone on American soil, already right next to the target, in order to crash it by sending falsified GPS coordinates?

Did you read the part of the article that said "The demonstration of the near-disaster, led by Professor Todd Humphreys and his team at the UTA's Radionavigation Laboratory, points to a "gaping hole" in the US's plan to open US airspace to thousands of drones," so presumably there's an existing plan to use drones in US airspace. One would imagine they would be most useful over densely populated areas.

The FAA is currently coming up with the rules to govern unmanned systems in the national airspace. They have a mandate from congress to have the rules in place by 2015. As of today, the only way to commercially operate a UAV requires case-by-case permissions.

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#23

Post by tzs » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 7:58 PM UTC

ARobotics wrote: post #3

I know the title here is the same as the article, but why the heck did sophos choose "Texas college" for the something done by the University of Texas? I assumed from the title it was done by some small school somewhere in Texas, not UT.

UT is in the top 30 on the Times Higher Education world university rankings: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki...

They are #13 on the list of world rankings of engineering schools: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki...

By saying "Texas college", it makes it sound like some random second or third tier school did it. That's much more sensationalistic as it can easily give the casual reader the impression that pretty much anyone can easily hack these drones. If they said a team from a top engineering school did it, it would not frighten people because that's the kind of thing you EXPECT people from top engineering schools to be able to do.

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#24

Post by blutack » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 8:09 PM UTC

Indeed, this is really bad reporting (IAA UAV researcher).

They were using a small rotary wing (relatively cheap) research UAV, despite the various articles including pictures of Global Hawks/MQ-9s etc. These small systems are usually designed for research, and so use the same UBlox/MTK/Sirf based GPS chipsets you find in sat-nav systems for example.

It looks similar to a Yamaha RMax, although I can't be bothered to find the actual model. The RMax is designed for agricultural use & research, not fighting wars.

The vehicle control software simply assumes the GPS is correct. It wouldn't be that difficult to cross-check against the IMU data - our research drones can happily fly for a few seconds if they loose their GPS lock but spoofing would probably knock them down, because we just assume it won't happen!

You could build a DIY version of the Texas drone for around $1000 using open source hardware and a COTS model helicopter.

---

This not news, anyone who works with these vehicles knows this. It's like shooting a horse and then claiming terrorists can take out tanks with a single bullet.

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#25

Post by asynchronous13 » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 8:19 PM UTC

blutack wrote: post #24

Indeed, this is really bad reporting (IAA UAV researcher). They were using a small rotary wing (relatively cheap) research UAV, despite the various articles including pictures of Global Hawks/MQ-9s etc. These small systems are usually designed for research, and so use the same UBlox/MTK/Sirf based GPS chipsets you find in sat-nav systems for example. It looks similar to a Yamaha RMax, although I can't be bothered to…

The Rmax is much larger than the helicopter UT is flying.

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#26

Post by ricardobeat » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 8:33 PM UTC

What prevents this kind of attack from being used on current commercial airliners?

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#27

Post by SoftwareMaven » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 8:44 PM UTC

blutack wrote: post #24

Indeed, this is really bad reporting (IAA UAV researcher). They were using a small rotary wing (relatively cheap) research UAV, despite the various articles including pictures of Global Hawks/MQ-9s etc. These small systems are usually designed for research, and so use the same UBlox/MTK/Sirf based GPS chipsets you find in sat-nav systems for example. It looks similar to a Yamaha RMax, although I can't be bothered to…

While I agree the article is sensationalist and the pictures are misleading, I disagree that there is no relevance. If anything, everything you've said makes it more concerning. These are exactly the kind of drones we will have flying overhead, which will all be easily borked by anybody with $1000 and some good technical knowledge.

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#28

Post by jakejake » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 8:49 PM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #26

What prevents this kind of attack from being used on current commercial airliners?

You'd imagine the pilots would notice if the auto-pilot started flying erratically. I'm sure it could be used to confuse the hell out of the pilots though.

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#29

Post by dfield » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 8:51 PM UTC

blutack wrote: post #24

Indeed, this is really bad reporting (IAA UAV researcher). They were using a small rotary wing (relatively cheap) research UAV, despite the various articles including pictures of Global Hawks/MQ-9s etc. These small systems are usually designed for research, and so use the same UBlox/MTK/Sirf based GPS chipsets you find in sat-nav systems for example. It looks similar to a Yamaha RMax, although I can't be bothered to…

Thanks for your comment.

If you are comfortable would you mind linking to your homepage or sending me your contact info? (You can find my email at dylanfield.com) I'd love to talk more with you sometime.

Re: Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

#30

Post by erikb » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 9:16 PM UTC

asynchronous13 wrote: post #13

Egads, the news coverage of this is horrible fear mongering. The researchers from UT built a system to protect against GPS spoofing. In order to prove that their protection system works, they had to demonstrate that GPS spoofing is feasible. Without exception, every news item on this only mentions the spoofing part, and not the protection part. Military unmanned systems use encrypted GPS that is not vulnerable to the…

Do you have some reasonable sources about GPS jamming? From what I know, GPS should be protected against jamming through signal spreading, which means you should be only able to do it with investing unreasonable amounts of resources.