bhramos
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So how safe are the Drones, if this type of Tech falls in hands of terrorists???
Sudents hijack drone for $1,000 bet - The Times of IndiaTEXAS: On a dare, Texas college researchers hacked into and hijacked a drone of the US Homeland Security before the eyes of the officials operating it. Using a technique called 'spoofing' where a signal from hackers imitates the one sent to the drone's on-board GPS, the researchers managed to take control of a small but powerful drone in mid-air .
During the experiment conducted at the University of Texas stadium, the small red drone soared into the sky following a clear set of commands entered into its computer. Shortly after, the aircraft veered to the side, making it obvious that it was no longer following its original orders.
Then, the drone hurtled toward the ground as if given a self-destruct command and was saved in the last moment.
And the hijacking was just for a $1,000 wager. But the incident has unnerved Homeland security officials, as the spoofing has made it possible for anyone with a $1,000 and a plan to turn a harmless UAV into a missile and crash it into a building.
The hijackers team led by professor Todd Humphreys at Austin Radio-navigation Laboratory said his team was able to build the most sophisticated spoofing system yet that tricked the drone into following a new set of commands . "Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a plane," Humphreys said.
The stadium display was not the first time government officials witnessed spoofing in action. Last Tuesday, officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Homeland Security watched as Humphreys' team repeatedly hijacked a drone from a remote hilltop in New Mexico.