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Drone hijacked by UT hackers with $1,000 spoofer

nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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

#41

Post by jandrewrogers »

ricardobeat wrote: post #38
asynchronous13 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primarily because commercial airliners do not use GPS.

Don't they? AFAIK they are used for navigation, they just can't transmit back - but that's set to be implemented in the coming years. Would love to hear more on that.

All critical systems have used inertial navigation for decades. The systems may accept GPS corrections within the error margins of inertial navigation but nothing more.

Inertial navigation used to have larger margins of error than GPS. Since GPS was not trustworthy and inertial is, they accept GPS fine-tuning to the trusted inertial system. If the inertial system and GPS system disagree, GPS is ignored.

State-of-the-art inertial systems are now more precise than GPS.

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

#42

Post by jandrewrogers »

asynchronous13 wrote: post #19
rabidsnail wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPS jamming is so much easier than spoofing and results in the same thing. Does it? Can't the drone tell that the GPS input that it's getting is inconsistent and fall back to flying home using dead reckoning?

Technically, yes it is possible for an autopilot to use dead reckoning for navigation without GPS at all. (we didn't use GPS to navigate to the moon, right?) However, all commercial autopilots that I know of rely on GPS to some degree. The difference is the use of low-cost gyros and accelerometers. They are good enough when augmented with GPS, but not good enough all alone. Edit: the low-cost sensors can be augmented…

State-of-the-art inertial navigation technology has approximately the same precision as state-of-the-art GPS. Even modern run-of-the-mill interferometer-based inertial systems are precise enough for most purposes.

The unique value of inertial navigation is that it requires neither receiving nor sending a signal that can be jammed or spoofed, hence why the military uses it for everything.

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

#43

Post by philip1209 »

rabidsnail wrote: post #18
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…

> GPS jamming is so much easier than spoofing and results in the same thing. Does it? Can't the drone tell that the GPS input that it's getting is inconsistent and fall back to flying home using dead reckoning?

I would expect a secondary form of navigation. Submarines and even Google Maps cars use an inertial guidance system - if GPS is lost or clearly spoofed, you can rely on the inertial guidance system long enough to set a trajectory for a safe zone.

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

#44

Post by StacyC »

dctoedt wrote: post #11
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.

Amen! I had exactly the same reaction. (Disclosure: I'm an alumnus, twice.)

Hook 'em Horns!

Sorry, conditioned response from this alum.

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

#45

Post by blutack »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #27
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.

I agree it is an area that could do with research. However, we know consumer level GPSs have no protection against spoofing (indeed, you can buy GPS jammers from various websites for defeating fleet tracking systems).

You could as well use a replay attack against the pilot's control system (probably on 2.4GHz) using much cheaper hardware.

There is still plenty of work to do before these class of research drones become commonplace overhead - in particular, practically every onboard system is a single point of failure.

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

#46

Post by Cushman »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #42
asynchronous13 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, yes it is possible for an autopilot to use dead reckoning for navigation without GPS at all. (we didn't use GPS to navigate to the moon, right?) However, all commercial autopilots that I know of rely on GPS to some degree. The difference is the use of low-cost gyros and accelerometers. They are good enough when augmented with GPS, but not good enough all alone. Edit: the low-cost sensors can be augmented…

State-of-the-art inertial navigation technology has approximately the same precision as state-of-the-art GPS. Even modern run-of-the-mill interferometer-based inertial systems are precise enough for most purposes. The unique value of inertial navigation is that it requires neither receiving nor sending a signal that can be jammed or spoofed, hence why the military uses it for everything.

Out of curiosity, how precise are we talking? I assume the top-level military tech is classified, but if I buy off-the-shelf parts, how far can I fly and still land on the runway using pure dead reckoning?

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

#47

Post by blutack »

asynchronous13 wrote: post #25
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.

Indeed - I eventually found a picture of it with a person for scale. Do you know what it is?

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

#48

Post by jeltz »

blutack wrote: post #45
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree it is an area that could do with research. However, we know consumer level GPSs have no protection against spoofing (indeed, you can buy GPS jammers from various websites for defeating fleet tracking systems). You could as well use a replay attack against the pilot's control system (probably on 2.4GHz) using much cheaper hardware. There is still plenty of work to do before these class of research drones becom…

Sounds to me then like FAA should require all drones to be safe against things like GPS spoofing, GPS jammers and replay attacks before they open up the airspace for drones.

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

#49

Post by asynchronous13 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #42
asynchronous13 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, yes it is possible for an autopilot to use dead reckoning for navigation without GPS at all. (we didn't use GPS to navigate to the moon, right?) However, all commercial autopilots that I know of rely on GPS to some degree. The difference is the use of low-cost gyros and accelerometers. They are good enough when augmented with GPS, but not good enough all alone. Edit: the low-cost sensors can be augmented…

State-of-the-art inertial navigation technology has approximately the same precision as state-of-the-art GPS. Even modern run-of-the-mill interferometer-based inertial systems are precise enough for most purposes. The unique value of inertial navigation is that it requires neither receiving nor sending a signal that can be jammed or spoofed, hence why the military uses it for everything.

1960's inertial navigation systems have better resolution than today's consumer GPS. The issue is not the technology, it's the cost, size, and weight. The small, light, and low-cost sensors fueling the current wave of UAVs are not the most accurate technology available, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful.

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

#50

Post by asynchronous13 »

blutack wrote: post #47
asynchronous13 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Indeed - I eventually found a picture of it with a person for scale. Do you know what it is?

I believe they are using an electric Logo 500.

Edit: yep. It's from Adaptive Flight, Inc. which is a modified Logo 500. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/drone-hijacking/all/

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