Hijacking a Drone for Under $1000

image via Wikipedia

The US Department of Homeland Security was skeptical when it received a notice from Todd Humphreys at the University of Texas in Austin warning them about the threat of hijacked drones possibly being used as missiles. When Humphreys pressed the issue, the DHS dared him to go ahead and try to hijack a drone for less than $1000.

Imagine their surprise when he did.

image via DroneWars

"What? No, we told it to crash."

Drones use GPS signals to determine their own location so it doesn't do something stupid like fly to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. This signal, unlike the command and control signal, is normally unencrypted and can be easily intercepted by anyone with minimal technical skills and a small amount of cash.

image via Giphy

Give 'em a small amount of cash, terrible fashion sense, and a razor and anyone can be a supervillian nowadays.

Once that signal is hacked it becomes possible to feed false GPS coordinates to the drone, giving the hacker full control. The drone could be flying through Death Valley, and be receiving GPS signals that it's currently on top of Mount Everest.

From here it's possible to make the drone do whatever the hacker wants. A loop perhaps. Maybe make it land on your street. Or if your a person who doesn't deserve to be in public, fly it into the jet intake of an airliner full of orphans and puppies. At least that's what Humphreys was attempting to demonstrate to the DHS.

image via Biography.com

"Bin Laden is so 2001."

(Yes, I'm going to hell.)

The message driven into the ground just like the $80,000 drone used in the demonstration.

The best part about it? The US can't tell if a drone is being spoofed. As far as the drone is concerned, nothing is wrong. It is still receiving a GPS signal (albeit a very wrong one), it's not being jammed, and as far as the drone is concerned, nothing is out of the ordinary. The US doesn't know a drone is being spoofed until it happens to land in an Iranian air base like one happily did back in 2011.

This is why some people are a little uneasy that there could be as many as 30,000 of these things flying around the next few years. After all, it's not like we don't already have a problem with drones almost bringing down airliners.

But on the other hand, pizza delivery via drones!

image via NBC

Worth it.