If you’ve been worried about the number of law enforcement agencies that want to use drones to surveil the domestic populace, then here’s one more thing to freak out about: They arepathetically easy to hijack. In fact, a determined individual can do it with less than $1,000 worth of equipment.
In a report aired on Fox News, University of Texas at Austin Professor Todd Humphreysdemonstrated how easy hijacking an unmanned drone can be. Using a device to “spoof” the navigation signal from the Global Positioning System, Humphreys and his team effectively took control of a small demonstration vehicle. The drone used in Humphrey’s presentation was a small helicopter UAV, similar to the ShadowHawk pictured above.
By sending out a signal that looks like GPS, Humphreys was able to trick the drone into a new set of commands. Wikipedia has a delightfully deft description of how it works:
Because GPS systems work by measuring the time it takes for a signal to travel from the satellite to the receiver, a successful spoofing requires that the attacker know precisely where the target is so that the spoofed signal can be structured with the proper signal delays. A GPS spoofing attack begins by broadcasting a slightly more powerful signal that produces the correct position, and then slowly deviates away towards the position desired by the spoofer, because moving too quickly will cause the receiver to lose signal lock altogether, at which point the spoofer works only as a jammer.
Though the ease with which the team seized control of the drone will no doubt turn some heads, it’s worth noting that Humphreys works at the University’s Radionavigation Laboratory and is uniquely suited to pull off such a feat. However, the low cost of Humphrey’s spoofing device — which Russia Today described as “the most advanced one ever built” — suggests that this kind of device could be quickly and easily manufactured by those who don’t understand how it works. And that’s scary.
The drawbacks of GPS has been known for a while, but the difficulty in replacing it with a new standard has yet to gain any real traction. As unnerving as law enforcement drones running out of control is, the fact that this same kind of attack could easily be done to any of the numerous GPS devices people interact with on a daily basis. Hopefully, this stunt by Humphreys will get people to stand up and take notice.
(Fox via Russia Today via NOSInt)
http://www.geekosystem.com/uav-gps-spoof/
Another article with a lot of hype. How hard can it be to overload a GPS receiver in a confined area with a stronger signal causing the sUAS to have an inaccurate position. Apparently sophisticated car thieves have been doing this for a while with commercial GPS jammers. To really take control of a UAV you need to hack into it’s encrypted telemetry link and take control of the unit. This process is far more complex as it requires the ability to hack this encrypted connection and then it requires a knowledge of the commands required to control the unit a far more difficult prospect. As systems use different protocols and have different control methodologies and architectures. So you would need extended opportunity to study the system all this while the UAV is moving.
Yep the UK study of jamming was quite alarming.
Mr Mortimer,
If the study is the one above you are referring to it was actually a DHS, FAA and University of Texas experiment. The photo is inaccurate and must have been selected at random as there wasnt even a quad rotor present.
Reference: I safety piloted the experiments mentioned
William the picture was chosen to represent the type of system that people will be worrying about being hi jacked.
I find it interesting that the article reads “under $1000 worth of equipment”. Simply and matter of fact not true. These test were conducted at White Sands Missile Range using all the resources available from many corporations and the U.S. Government. Also, the editor of the news release could at least do do some due diligence and not put another companies product in the picture and or contact the company that manufactured the UAV prior to publishing it. Being the manufacturer of the UAV I find it interesting everyone has written articles or produced TV reports on this without ever contact me or the company. For this test to be successful it required much more than just pointing a spoofing signal and redirecting the commanded position. Editors, if you would like to know the extent it took for the test to be successful and how we had to not enable certain functions to allow the aircraft to be “spoofed” feel free to contact us anytime.