posted on Dec, 9 2011 @ 01:55 PM
Unfortunately, nothing is foolproof, and it looks like we just handed Iran and whoever they choose to share it with, a very nice Christmas present.
Software and electronics can be easily destroyed remotely. However... By looking at the condition of the craft, it would obviously appear that any
flight related systems would most likely still be intact. If they were destroyed, it would have crashed.
My fear of a potential scenario is that a virus could have been planted, that would not have given the hackers full control of the craft, but simply
controlled one aspect of the craft's programing through a backdoor. Say for instance, the phone home feature that tells it what to do in the event of
comm loss. Theoretically, a virus could be created to tell that part of the programing... 'OK, when this happens, don't do what they told you to
do... do this instead'. ie: Don't return to this field in the event of lost comms, go to this field instead, then land.
Then it would just be a matter of waiting for the craft to hit that parameter where the virus kicks in and get lucky. I hope that it doesn't turn out
that's what happened, because that would be highly damaging to UAV efforts in general.