Spotlight

“By 2015, unmanned drones will be allowed in U.S. airspace, raising many questions about our national security and privacy. What some University of Texas researchers set out to prove was whether it took much effort to hack them. With just $1,000 worth of software, the group was able to successfully hijack a civilian drone. Dr. Todd Humphreys and his team of students first experimented at the University of Texas at Austin. Then, the team was asked to demonstrate the process for the Department of Homeland Security. Dr. Humphreys and graduate student Daniel Shepherd explain how they were able to hack into the drone, and what implications it has for our nation’s safety.”

Continue to CNN to watch the video interview with Daniel Shepard and Dr. Humphreys.

“After a dress rehearsal at Royal-Memorial Stadium, University of Texas researchers traveled to New Mexico last month and demonstrated for U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials how an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, can be commandeered by hacking into its navigation system.

The technique, known as spoofing, created false Global Positioning System signals that tricked the drone’s GPS receiver into steering a new course.

The Global Positioning System, which uses satellites and radio signals, is not encrypted for civilian uses, and that raises concern about the federal government’s plan to permit thousands of drones in U.S. air space for commercial, law enforcement and university purposes, said Todd Humphreys, an assistant professor in UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering. “The dirty fact is it’s an open signal, and easily hacked,” Humphreys said.”

Continue reading the Austin American Statesman article.

“The use of drones is taking off in America. Local governments and private businesses see them as a cheap and effective way of maintaining an eye from the sky. But will the drones be fully under their control? A college professor and his students say not necessarily. A civilian drone aircraft was hijacked by Prof. Todd Humphreys and his graduate students at the University of Texas. They were able to hack into the GPS signals of the drone, not only manipulating its flight path while flying over White Sands, New Mexico, but later landing it. Humphreys told CBS News, “You can think of this as hijacking a plane from a distance. (It’s) as if you’re at the controls of the plane, because you’ve now captured the autopilot’s sense of its own navigation solution. And you can manipulate it left or right, up or down.”

Continue reading the CBS article that features a video interview with Dr. Humphreys.

“Todd Humphreys’ tale about hacking a civilian drone in front of the Department of Homeland Security has gone viral since he conducted the experiment last month. Now the assistant professor at the University of Texas explains his work to RT. In an interview with RT America this week, Todd Humphreys of the University of Texas at Austin’s Radionavigation Laboratory reveals that it only took a few researchers, around $1,000 in parts and some seriously smart software to send signals to an unmanned aerial vehicle’s GPS receiver, hijack the craft in mid-air and then have it do the department’s bidding—all right in front of Homeland Security agents.”

Continue reading the RT article that features a video interview with Dr. Humphreys.

RT’s video interview can also be viewed on YouTube.

“A University of Texas professor recently hacked into the GPS system of a drone aircraft and take control of it using less than $1,000 worth of equipment. The achievement may have implications for the future use of drones in the United States and abroad. Let’s say you’re hungry and you’ve craving a meal from your favorite restaurant. But instead of a delivery car pulling up to the curb, a drone lands at your front door. It could happen. Todd Humphreys of the Radionavigation Laboratory at UT Austin thinks so.

Continue reading the KUT article that features an audio interview with Dr. Humphreys.

“There are a few reasons for a Longhorn football practice to be moved—a tornado, hail, and fire come to mind—but a science experiment isn’t usually one of them. But it wasn’t just any science experiment that caused UT Athletics officials to relocate the Longhorns’ strength-training practice last week: it was a demo that revealed a new danger to our national security. “It was funny,” says Todd Humphreys, director of UT’s Radionavigation Lab. “We were doing this huge, unprecedented demo, and the students were most excited about the fact that they moved football practice for us.” Humphreys and a group of engineering students have dedicated their time to researching a powerful new GPS technology known as spoofing, through which one GPS signal is replaced by another.

Continue reading the Alcalde article.

“A University of Texas at Austin research team successfully demonstrated for the first time that the GPS signals of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, can be commandeered by an outside source—a discovery that could factor heavily into the implementation of a new federal mandate to allow thousands of civilian drones into the U.S. airspace by 2015. Cockrell School of Engineering Assistant Professor Todd Humphreys and his students were invited by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to attempt the demonstration in White Sands, New Mexico in late June. Using a small but sophisticated UAV along with hardware and software developed by Humphreys and his students, the research team repeatedly overtook navigational signals going to the GPS-guided vehicle.

Continue reading the UT Engineering article.

“The BBC is reporting that researchers from the University of Texas at Austin managed to hack an experimental drone by spoofing GPS signals. Theoretically, this would allow the hackers to direct the drone to coordinates of their choosing. ‘The spoofed drone used an unencrypted GPS signal, which is normally used by civilian planes, says Noel Sharkey, co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control. “It’s easy to spoof an unencrypted drone. Anybody technically skilled could do this – it would cost them some £700 for the equipment and that’s it,” he told BBC News. “It’s very dangerous – if a drone is being directed somewhere using its GPS, [a spoofer] can make it think it’s somewhere else and make it crash into a building, or crash somewhere else, or just steal it and fill it with explosives and direct somewhere. But the big worry is — it also means that it wouldn’t be too hard for [a very skilled person] to work out how to un-encrypt military drones and spoof them, and that could be extremely dangerous because they could turn them on the wrong people.”

Continue reading the Slashdot article.

“American researchers took control of a flying drone by hacking into its GPS system – acting on a $1,000 (£640) dare from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A University of Texas at Austin team used “spoofing” – a technique where the drone mistakes the signal from hackers for the one sent from GPS satellites. The same method may have been used to bring down a US drone in Iran in 2011. Analysts say that the demo shows the potential danger of using drones.”

Continue reading the BBC article.

Listen to the three-minute-long podcast interview with Dr. Humphreys starting at 49:30.

“Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin Radionavigation Laboratory have successfully demonstrated that a drone with an unencrypted GPS system can be taken over by a person wielding a GPS spoofing device. You can see a video accompanying a Fox News story on it, as well as a video here of an experiment conducted by the researchers, led by Professor Todd Humphreys.

Humphreys and company were recently invited by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to demonstrate whether their capability to successfully spoof commercial GPS systems in the laboratory could work in the field. Spoofing, as defined in this article by UT researchers, is “the transmission of matched-GPS-signal-structure interference in an attempt to commandeer the tracking loops of a victim receiver and thereby manipulate the receiver’s timing or navigation solution. A spoofer can transmit its counterfeit signals from a stand-off distance of several hundred meters or it can be co-located with its victim.”

Continue reading the IEEE Spectrum Risk Factor blog post.

Listen to an audio interview with Dr. Humphreys.