Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet

[slgrieb]

This may be old news for some of you, but I just read it. Courtesy of Wired's Danger Room: Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet

[Guts3d]

Yikes! I am going to have nightmares tonight!

[Niclo Iste]

In my honest opinion I would assume this is digital espionage as it's interesting that only that network of systems was hit. I also have a suspicion that the article I posted earlier regarding the BIOS infector was an infector that was to test the viability or if not is the type of infector involved which is making removal such a chore. Wish I could be involved on the clean up just so I could see what the nasty is and to try and fix it. Not saying that I could, just I want to have a go at removing the thing.

[slgrieb]

Yeah, I can't wait for the follow up on this! Gotta wonder how much we'll actually be told, though.

Here's a (very) little more information.

[BOB IROC]

This may be old news for some of you, but I just read it. Courtesy of Wired's Danger Room: Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet

Didn't I see this in a movie once? Or was it that the drone became self aware?

[Niclo Iste]

You did see it, the drone was self aware and the script was cheesier than a velveta shells dinner.

[Niclo Iste]

Updated article http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10...ckpit_malware/

I would like to take this moment to call BULL$#!+ as that is not a hard to remove type of infection that would stump an IT department. Either they are lying about what the infection was, claiming they found an infection to calm public fears, or their IT team needs replaced by little ol' me for the low low rate of half of their combined salaries.

[Niclo Iste]

For some reason this never got pushed to the most recent threads when I replied so as much as I hate seeing a bump here is a bump.

[slgrieb]

Even Kevin Coleman (the cyber security commentator over at defensetech.org) is now saying that this was an unimportant event. Uh huh. He currently says that it was just a simple keystroke logger that was unable to send logs anywhere, so it didn't matter.

The fact that an infiltration of this sort got into the system in the first place certainly isn't reassuring, and neither was the apparent difficulty experienced in eliminating the pest. That also doesn't speak well of the security team's competence. This is a little like watching a Three Stooges episode where Curly assures you that your plumbing is A OK now after the repairs. Face it, you know a bathtub is about to fall through the ceiling and the house will flood. As you've already said, Niclo, I just don't see that much of the spin here is credible.

[Niclo Iste]

What I love is how I called this one, suggestions in the news reports keep veering towards it was commandeered by Iranian crews, and the U.S. comment of "we lost control" that corroborate it see the details here http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2011/1...tes/?hpt=hp_t2

Not to mention the threads about the landsats that were compromised earlier as well would support the thought that, yes our systems got hacked and we got bit in the *** for it.

[slgrieb]

What I love is how I called this one, suggestions in the news reports keep veering towards it was commandeered by Iranian crews, and the U.S. comment of "we lost control" that corroborate it see the details here http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2011/1...tes/?hpt=hp_t2

Not to mention the threads about the landsats that were compromised earlier as well would support the thought that, yes our systems got hacked and we got bit in the *** for it.

In fact the U.S. recently had a second drone crash, but no one has taken credit for it. Also, Hezbollah apparently was able to take control of an Israeli drone about a month ago. Pretty safe to assume they did it with Iranian technology.