It seems that the Predator drones that the CIA has been using for years to do reconnaissance in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have been hacked. Now I'm not overly surprised that someone eventually found a way into this system since no system is unbreakable, but what i had a hard time comprehending was that it was achieved using an off the shelf application known as SkyGrabber. SkyGrabber works as an intercept program, which hijacks satellite feed without interrupting the data stream. The program is available for only $25.95, and is fully capable of viewing the camera feeds of these recon drones widely used by both the CIA and US Air Force. How is a $26 piece of software able to intercept the video feeds of both the CIA and USAF? The answer is simple, for some ridiculous reason, these feeds were never encrypted.
While this does not yet allow the hijackers to take control of the $20m multipurpose unmanned aircraft (the Predator is classified as multipurpose as they are commonly armed with Hellfire missiles.
It does however raise questions as to how much more work it would really take for a terrorist to get into the system and take control of a drone, thus enabling them to possibly use it in an attack against our own forces.
The discovery of this information so easily available was apparently made at least a year ago when the US military apprehended a Shia militant that had intercepted video feeds on his laptop.
Original story from Times Online
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