Flying hacker contraption hunts other drones, turns them into zombies

All your Parrot drones are belong us...

Serial hacker Samy Kamkar has released all the hardware and software specifications that hobbyists need to build an aerial drone that seeks out other drones in the air, hacks them, and turns them into a conscripted army of unmanned vehicles under the attacker's control.

Dubbed SkyJack, the contraption uses a radio-controlled Parrot AR.Drone quadcopter carrying a Raspberry Pi circuit board, a small battery, and two wireless transmitters. The devices run a combination of custom software and off-the-shelf applications that seek out wireless signals of nearby Parrot drones, hijack the wireless connections used to control them, and commandeer the victims' flight-control and camera systems. SkyJack will also run on land-based Linux devices and hack drones within radio range. At least 500,000 Parrot drones have been sold since the model was introduced in 2010.

Kamkar is the creator of the infamous Samy worm, a complex piece of JavaScript that knocked MySpace out of commission in 2005 when the exploit added more than one million MySpace friends to Kamkar's account. Kamkar was later convicted for the stunt. He has since devoted his skills to legal hacks, including development of the "evercookie," a highly persistent browser cookie with troubling privacy implications. He has also researched location data stored by Android devices.

SkyJack made its debut the same week that Amazon unveiled plans to use drones to deliver packages to customers' homes or businesses.

"How fun would it be to take over drones, carrying Amazon packages... or take over any other drones and make them my little zombie drones," Kamkar asked rhetorically in a blog post published Monday. "Awesome."

More at link

Parrot Drone

Not surprised this can happen. Just another oops...

I can figure why he might want to release the info to do this, but why attach his name to it! Surely that can only lead to jail time?

If he doesn't actually hijack someone's drone then he hasn't done anything. It will probably get him some work.

Wonder if there is something buried in the Patriot Act that can make the author of this type of software part of terrorism. If not, coming to Congress near you soon.

If he's on to the Parrot drone, well, good luck launching any attacks with and acquired army as their time in the air is limited. However, if he can tap into those proposed Amazon 30 minute delivery drones, the sky's the limit!

roadgravel
Wonder if there is something buried in the Patriot Act that can make the author of this type of software part of terrorism. If not, coming to Congress near you soon.

edit on 12/4/2013 by roadgravel because: typo

They're probably writing it up as we speak.

I fly RC Copters, so things like this bother me a little. I'm in the uk and at the moment there's no regulation whatsoever on rc devices, but I can see this being used so that I'll have to register, just like a gun owner does.

At the moment, SkyJack is engineered to target a small range of drones. That's because it's programmed to take over drones only if their MACs fall inside an address block reserved by Parrot AR.Drone vehicles.

If the MAC falls outside that range, SkyJack takes no action at all. But the software is built in a way to easily target other types of drones that have communication systems that are similar to Parrot.

That means a much broader range of devices may be susceptible to radio-controlled hijacking if they fail to adequately secure their connections.

There may be more.

My amazon deliveries come in my mailbox and will continue to come that way.

And if he means military ones....

VoidHawk
I can figure why he might want to release the info to do this, but why attach his name to it! Surely that can only lead to jail time?

Free idea for the taking, a small gps tracker that alerts the cops as to the location of the hijacked drone. Probably easy for an arduino egghead to do and sell as an add on.

Somebody could make decent money just protecting drones and getting thieves prosecuted in the bargain.

From the comments

So at the very minimum you can reliably disconnect any drone operating on wifi by just flooding the airwaves with deauthentication frames.

There are no provisions for encrypting wifi management frames as of yet (WPA/WEP/etc take care of encrypting data payloads only).

badgerprints

VoidHawk
I can figure why he might want to release the info to do this, but why attach his name to it! Surely that can only lead to jail time?

Free idea for the taking, a small gps tracker that alerts the cops as to the location of the hijacked drone. Probably easy for an arduino egghead to do and sell as an add on.

Somebody could make decent money just protecting drones and getting thieves prosecuted in the bargain.

Damned straight!...Drone fighter escorts with" Robo-Cop" software! You can only blame god and science fiction for this!!

reply to post by roadgravel


Ok, this is the second thread on this, and I've still yet to see what the point is?

The word drone seems to instantly elicit "Ooh military, police drones, lets get 'em!!!" when in fact these are nothing of the sort.

Another Oops? What? unencrypted wifi? Ingenuity? Flying vehicles with remote control ability? what is the oops?

half a million of these things are out there. Oops that little timmy has had his sunday buggered up because jimmy jackass hacked into his xmas present and flew it into a tree??

It's laughable how these threads go.

"DRONES!! Im preparing my shotgun!! hyuk!!!"
"DRONES!! Looky here, they got 'em hackered!!!"
"DRONES!! NOT OVER MY HOUSE THEY AINT!!!"

rc vehicles, with cameras, have been around for a long time. but call it a drone, and the TSHTF brigade get on their camo paint and beat their chests..

Well, you might stuff up a pizza delivery. Or as unity alluded to, a book drop. But you certainly won't be knocking down the police 'drones' or sending schematics to the mid east on how to hack the 'drones' before they drop their payloads.

Why is it that if it's a gun, people get all up in arms about the nomenclature being wrong. but here, it's what sells the thread?

I just thought it was interesting that the design is easy to high jack. Don't read about it if offends you.

TSHTF brigade get on their camo paint and beat their chests

Where does that come from. Don't see any in this thread.