I was pretty shocked when I saw this article on
Pentagon: Insurgents intercepted drone spy videos."
Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have intercepted live video feeds from Predator drones, a key weapon in a Pentagon spy system that serves as the military's eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection.
Though militants could see the video, there is no evidence they were able to jam the electronic signals from the unmanned aerial craft or take control of the vehicles, a senior defense official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence issues.
Obtaining the video feeds can provide insurgents with critical information about what the military may be targeting, including buildings, roads and other facilities.
Shiite fighters in Iraq used off-the-shelf software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The interception, first done there at least a year ago, was possible because the remotely flown planes had unprotected communications links. [...]
The military has known about the vulnerability for more than a decade, but assumed adversaries would not be able to exploit it.
I find this shocking that the military was using unprotected communications to transmit video feeds from drones. That's valuable intelligence information being broadcasted.
I think as the US military depends more and more on unmanned vehicles, the more incentive it will be for enemies to exploit this. Imagine if adversaries could jam control signals to these unmanned vehicles, the vehicles may just crash. An even more troubling problem would be if adversaries could hack into these drones, and take direct control of them. It's worrisome because some of these drones carry weapons.
