A ghost in the drones

Posted at 1:14 PM on October 7, 2011 by Jon Gordon (2 Comments)
Filed under: Aviation, Tech

Fascinating, and maybe a little scary: Wired's Noah Shachtman reports that a computer virus has infected the U.S. military's fleet of unmanned aircraft, or drones. Excerpt:

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America's Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military's Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech's computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military's most important weapons system.

"We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back," says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. "We think it's benign. But we just don't know."

Comments (2)

Sooo...maybe China reversed engineered Stuxnet and aimed it at our drone fleet?

Posted by Tyler | October 7, 2011 4:12 PM

What I want to know and have been trying to figure out is what is up with the drones flying over Duluth, MN. I saw one with my own eyes this past week during daylight hours. A co worker of mine saw one fly right over the roof of where we work before that.

Posted by Drew | February 10, 2012 8:16 PM

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