Insurgents hack predator drones with cheap software, Pentagon says it’s fixed now

IRAQI insurgents have used cheap off-the-shelf software to hack into video feeds from US predator drones.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Iranian-backed Shiite insurgents used software programs such as SkyGrabber – available online for $US25.95 ($29.30) – to capture live video footage from the unmanned aircraft.

The report exposed a possible weakness with the highly valued drones, which are increasingly crucial to US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as CIA manhunts against Al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan.

The US military has since fixed the problem, a defense official said yesterday.

“This is an old issue that’s been addressed,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that the problem has been “taken care of”.
The official confirmed the report was accurate but would not discuss details of efforts to encrypt the link between drones and operators on the ground.

Some sensitive video feeds from drones are routinely encrypted, said another defense official who asked not to be named. But the extent of the encryption remained unclear.

The problem was uncovered in July 2009, when the US military found files of intercepted drone video feeds on the laptop of a captured militant, intelligence and defense officials told the Journal.

They discovered “days and days and hours and hours of proof,” an unnamed source said.

“It is part of their kits now.”

Some of the most detailed examples of drone intercepts have been uncovered in Iraq, but the same technique is known to have been employed in Afghanistan and could easily be used in other areas where US drones operate.

The US government has known about the flaw since the 1990s, but assumed its adversaries would not be able to take advantage of it, the Journal said.

Adding encryption to a decade-old system requires upgrading several components of the system linking drones to ground control.

One of the developers of SkyGrabber, which is made by Russian company SkySoftware, told the Journal he had no idea the program could be used to intercept drone feeds.

“It was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the internet – no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content,” Andrew Solonikov said.

The report on intercepted drone feeds came a day after Lieutenant General David Deptula, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, said some unmanned aircraft in Afghanistan soon would be equipped with a new hi-tech camera system called “Gorgon Stare” – allowing a drone to beam back at least 10 separate video feeds at the same time.