Security and Safety – “Hacking Drones”

The November 2013 Issue of Scientific American has a disturbing article “Hacking Drones”, pp. 54-59. I not sure whether I’m more disturbed that drones are so easily hacked, spoofed and jammed, or that these issues weren’t foreseen and counteracted long before now.

The article documents a drone wandering into the highly protected space around the Capitol in Washington, DC; and a South Korean drone that crashed, probably due to GPS signal jamming from North Korea, killing one and injuring two.

The article states “… in the 1990’s security was a minor concern: the idea of broadcasting fake ADS-B signals was virtually unimaginable [my emphasis].”

You might argue that post 9/11 we have a different perspective on security.

However, in 1997 the movie Tomorrow Never Dies has James Bond confronting GPS spoofing used to create an international incident and a major war – so this isn’t exactly an unknown issue. Neuromancer was written by William Gibson in 1984, and predicted hacking as a major activity in cyberspace, a term he introduced in 1982.  Computer hacking dates to the 1960’s with phone phreaking, and went public with an Esquire Magazine article in 1971, leading to celebrity phone phreaks, including Steve Jobs. The 1992 movie Sneakers, starring Robert Redford, highlighted hacking of secure databases. The first computer virus dates to the early 1970’s on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, so this isn’t a new phenomenon.

You could argue that the designers decided to ignore security to save money and complexity, but the only way I can see you could argue it was “unimaginable” is if the designers were completely cut off from society.

I certainly hope we have more aware people working on all of these issues now. In particular, I highly recommend reading science fiction for anyone involved in designing anything for the future – it stimulates your mind to think about new technologies and their implications.

For example, Robert Heinlein wrote a fascinating story The Roads Must Roll in 1940 which was influential in my thinking about A-Ways, and changing vehicles while in motion. Coincidentally, it features hacking of the transportation system. He successfully predicted urban sprawl driven by cheap and efficient transportation. J

In future posts I will be describing the Safety, Security, and Privacy features I propose for Autonomous Systems – I hold 3 patents in Privacy and Security, so I’ve done a lot of thinking and system design in these areas.