yay for U Texas Austin

[Contrarian]

Texas college hacks drone in front of DHS -- RT
http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-1000-us-government-906/

Texas college hacks drone in front of DHS

Edited: 28 June, 2012, 22:38

There are a lot of cool things you can do with $1,000, but scientists
at an Austin, Texas college have come across one that is often
overlooked: for less than a grand, how'd you like to hijack a drone?

A group of researchers led by Professor Todd Humphreys from the
University of Texas at Austin Radio navigation Laboratory recently
succeeded in raising the eyebrows of the US government. With just
around $1,000 in parts, Humphreys' team took control of an unmanned
aerial vehicle owned by the college, all in front of the US Department
of Homeland Security.

After being challenged by his lab, the DHS dared Humphreys' crew to
hack into a drone and take command. Much to their chagrin, they did
exactly that.

Humphrey tells Fox News that for a few hundreds dollar his team was
able to "spoof" the GPS system on board the drone, a technique that
involves mimicking the actual signals sent to the global positioning
device and then eventually tricking the target into following a new set
of commands. And, for just $1,000, Humphreys says the spoofer his team
assembled was the most advanced one ever built.

"Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a
plane," Humphreys tells Fox. The real danger here, however, is that the
government is currently considering plans that will allow local law
enforcement agencies and other organizations from coast-to-coast to
control drones of their own in America's airspace.

"In five or ten years you have 30,000 drones in the airspace," he tells
Fox News. "Each one of these could be a potential missile used against
us."

<snip more>