US Drone ‘hacked’ by insurgents in Iraq with $26 software

Shia insurgents in Iraq have been able to capture footage from a US military drone by using SkyGrabber, a $26 software that is “normally” used to intercept satellite data stream that is broadcasted back to the ground. It is convenient because it doesn’t require an actual 2-way connection, it just grabs a one-way stream.

We can’t call this a real “hack” because the US military apparently broadcasts its video feed via an unencrypted data stream (!). Thanks to the interception, it is believed that insurgents have been able to see what places were targeted and could therefore avoid US strikes.

I don’t know if the stream is compressed or not, but it looks like the security level could be raised significantly if the video was compressed and encrypted. All you need is to slow down any brute force cracking by hours or days, it would make the real-time information useless. I smell an upcoming drone upgrade. Are you shocked that real-time intelligence footage was apparently broadcasted without encryption?

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Military, Top Stories