Displaying items by tag: Todd Humphreys

Last year we opened up a can of worms when we covered the discovery of how vulnerable commercial (and possibly military) drones were when it comes to keeping them on course. The GPS signals used to make sure that these drones are where they need to be was vulnerable to a simple spoofing attack that was put together by a group of college kids and with a budget of only $3,000. Considering the budgets that criminal organizations and governments have this news was not good at all.

Yesterday we wrote an article where we described how a military drone could be hacked through the use of GPS spoofing. This morning we received an email from one of the people involved in the actual event with some clarifications. First despite original reports (and some addition information we were given) the drone that was used for the demonstration was not a military class drone. It was one that the University of Texas purchased. It is still fairly sophisticated and is the same kind used by law enforcement. The team did this to point out serious issues with commercial drones before there is a rewrite of the FAA rules governing this new class of vehicles. You can check out the original story about for more information on the hack.

**********UPDATE 7/1/2012 - We have heard from Both Vanguard Defense Industries and Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas. The Drone in quesstion was NOT purchased from Vanguard. The University of Texas declined to state how they did purchase it from, but commented that the vulnerability exists in any drone that uses Civil GPS systems. ******************