Washington: Insurgents in Iraq have hacked
into live video feeds from Predator drones, the US military's
eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection.
A senior defence official says militants could see the
video, but there is no evidence they were able to jam the
electronic signals from the unmanned aerial crafts or take
control of them. The official spoke on condition of anonymity
to discuss intelligence issues.
The Wall Street Journal first reported today that Shiite
fighters in Iraq used off-the-shelf software programmes such
as SkyGrabber - available for as little as USD 25.95 on the
Internet - to regularly capture drone video feeds. The hacking
was possible because some of the planes have an unprotected
communications link.
Officials say the Defence Department is working to
encrypt the drone feeds.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, December 17, 2009, 23:44