Law-enforcement technologyUnmanned civilian drones vulnerable to hijacking
Unmanned drones have become the eyes and ears of the military in recent years, giving them an advantage in intelligence gathering and in operations without risking soldiers’ lives; the drones’ versatility and low price have made them an attractive tool for domestic law enforcement and first response missions; there is one glitch, though: drones can be hijacked; if that happens, these swift, unmanned aircrafts could become weapons for terrorists
Unmanned drones have become the eyes and ears of the military in recent years, giving them an advantage in intelligence gathering and in operations without risking soldiers’ lives. These planes can hover, swoop, and fly at altitudes high enough to operate undetected while providing high quality video and photos.
AeroViornment (AV) designs and builds these planes at a Simi Valley, California plant, and pending clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), AV’s drones are poised to be used in the United States and overseas in a range of missions, including law enforcement, pipeline monitoring, utility assets, and search and rescue missions.
The Daily News (Los Angeles) reports, though, that according to Professor Todd Humphreys of the University of Texas at Austin, though, there is one glitch – drones can be hijacked.
If that happens, these swift, unmanned aircrafts could become weapons for terrorists. AV officials quickly shot down any notion that their drones could be hijacked and have said that their technology makes it virtually impossible for anyone to hijack their planes.
Humphreys and his team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Radionavigation Laboratory conducted an experiment on 25 June that showed that they have found a way to hack into the GPS systems of the unmanned drones. The drone that the team used in the test was the Hornet Mini, a small remote controlled helicopter made by Adaptive Flight. Humphreys’s team did not test any AV drones, but he thinks they are just as vulnerable to being hijacked.
“I’m entirely certain that the ones they will sell to law enforcement are civilian grade,” Humphreys told the Daily News. “AV is a really well established group with lots of good ties, so they can probably just blow this off and no one will care in the short-term. But in the long-term … they will be pressured to address this.”
The practice known as “spoofing” gives out false GPS signals that trick the aircraft’s GPS receiver into thinking nothing is amiss – even as it steers a new navigational course determined by the outside hacker.
“The military and civilian signals come from the same satellite,” Humphreys told the Daily News. “The military signals are encrypted, so they can’t easily be falsified. But the civilian signals are the so-called `open’ signals that are transmitted in the clear with no authentication data.”
That means they can be mimicked, Humphreys said.
“You can predict them, so you can counterfeit them,” Humphreys said. “It’s almost like a dollar bill that isn’t being printed on special paper with watermarks and special ink. It would be like printing a dollar bill on a laser printer.”
Most drones that will fly over the United States will use civilian GPS systems, which are not encrypted and wide open to infiltration. Humphreys thinks that if the government does not address this vulnerability before these drones are allowed to fly over U.S. airspace, it could lead to dangerous circumstances.
Steven Gitlin, AV’s vice president of marketing strategy, said the company has gone through great pains to ensure that its unmanned aircraft systems are safe.
“We design our small UAS to be reliable, easy to use and secure,” Gitlin told the Daily News. “The digital data link encrypts the communications link between operator and aircraft, making it extremely difficult for someone to take over communication.”
Gitlin said that AV’s military drones have built-in counter measures that are designed to prevent them from being hijacked. “Our domestic-style systems will have similar counter measures,” he said. “And the FAA will likely rule that small, unmanned aircraft always operate in line of sight, so if something happened with the navigation system the operator would see that, and they could manually control it back home.”
Still, Humphreys figures the AV civilian drones will still be open to attack. “It just shows the kind of mentality that we got after 9-11, where we reinforced the cockpit door to prevent people hijacking planes,” he said. “Well, we need to adopt that mentality as far as the navigation systems for these UAVs.” Humphreys told the Daily News
John Villasenor, an electrical engineering professor at UCLA, thinks the drones will have a positive effect on society.
“I think that the overwhelming majority of applications of domestic UAVs will be positive,” he told the Daily News. “For example, when used for search and rescue or disaster relief, they will save lives. Of course, like almost any technology, UAVs can be misused. But we shouldn’t let the potential for misuse be a reason not to take advantage of their many benefits.”
James Gregory, a press officer with the U.S. Department of Defense, said his department requires that all new military GPS systems be protected by anti-spoofing technology. Pilots, he said, provide an additional safeguard against erroneous GPS data misdirecting aircraft - even for remotely piloted systems.
