Kidnapping a Mavic?

[Wombat55]

With all of these stories on these forums about Mavic fly-aways, I got to thinking: How difficult would it be for someone to "kidnap" a Mavic in-flight by sending signals to someone else's Mavic? Do all of our Mavics operate on slightly different frequency channels? When you buy a Mavic and controller, are they uniquely coupled together with their own private shared security password so that no one else can send command signals to your Mavic?

Not seriously suggesting that these fly-aways are all kidnappings (although it would explain how a Mavic could suddenly just fly away on its own, wouldn't it?). But I am wondering how secure our two-way controller-to-Mavic communications are.

 

[Qoncussion]

Controllers must be (and are) "bound" to the Mavic. So it's highly unlikely that one would be able to hijack the craft mid-flight.

 

[WheelzWorld]

Saw a documentary on hackers that can do that. They said the security protocol is very poor and pretty easy to get control of a drone.

Unless the mavic as some new kind of security, it is totally doable unfortunately...

 

[Qoncussion]

Saw a documentary on hackers that can do that. They said the security protocol is very poor and pretty easy to get control of a drone.

Unless the mavic as some new kind of security, it is totally doable unfortunately...

I too watched something recently where another brand of drone was easily hacked over wifi. I'm wondering if that's what you saw...? If so, the Mavic is not susceptible to this type of hack unless the pilot is flying in wifi mode, and the hacker has the unique wifi password. The more efficient hack for a Mavic is a GPS jammer. While they are illegal to use, they aren't too tough to find and order online .

 

[WheelzWorld]

There is always a possibility for sure... But the question is "is it really accessible and easy to do?" I seriously doubt many losses come from this (currently).

The doc I saw (on capital, a French TV show) spoke more about future of drones for commercial purposes and the hacker guy speaking about the defects in security was probably working to improve that (for companies at least...)

Hopefully there will be better security on mavic as well... Fingers crossed!

 

[WheelzWorld]

To be really sure you better put a second hidden GPS to keep track and catch that *****!

 

[Jaysjob]

Wouldn't that be a Mavnapping?

 

[SRJ_Mavic_PRO]

Good one Jay!

If the hackers can somehow manage to push the lil button mid flight on either the Phantom or the Mav then sure it's doable. About as doable as pigs flying.....

 

[WheelzWorld]

If you can hack a nuclear factory from far away or empty the credit card from somebody 20m around, I THINK you can hack a mavic lol...

 

[AlanTheBeast]

Not easily. The RC and the Mavic are "mated" and there's a procedure to mate a Mavic to a new RC.

The data scheme in RC mode is obscure (AFAIK) and possibly (and should be) encrypted (which is relatively trivial and has near 0 computing impact once the keys are generated - which I'd want refreshed every day or so). Likewise the downlink is mated to that controller, uses an obscure data scheme and could also be encrypted.

The frequency does change but only to use the least noisy channel - not as spoof avoidance.

 

[SRJ_Mavic_PRO]

Not easily. The RC and the Mavic are "mated" and there's a procedure to mate a Mavic to a new RC.

The data scheme in RC mode is obscure (AFAIK) and possibly (and should be) encrypted (which is relatively trivial and has near 0 computing impact once the keys are generated - which I'd want refreshed every day or so). Likewise the downlink is mated to that controller, uses an obscure data scheme and could also be encrypted.

The frequency does change but only to use the least noisy channel - not as spoof avoidance.

Yea that's why I think anyone thinking they can be hacked is in the chicken little category......watch out for the falling sky!

 

[WheelzWorld]

Funny...

 

[royalhghnss]

Not sure if I read it here or on r/djiMavic but some guy was in China filming something he shouldn't have and the police used something on his Mavic to make it land. He eventually got it back minus all the footage he shot.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

Not sure if I read it here or on r/djiMavic but some guy was in China filming something he shouldn't have and the police used something on his Mavic to make it land. He eventually got it back minus all the footage he shot.

There are very directional band jammers that will force it into RTH. The police in China may have something more "inside" from DJI to force it down at current location perhaps.

 

[SRJ_Mavic_PRO]

I would say that was "Big Brother" for ya but since it's China more like "Only 4 foot nothing" brother for ya.....

 

[AlanTheBeast]

One clue is somewhere in the DJI GO app where there are some geo settings that are exclusive to mainland China... I've met many Chinese that looked down at me and I'm 188 cm tall.

 

[WheelzWorld]

There are very directional band jammers that will force it into RTH. The police in China may have something more "inside" from DJI to force it down at current location perhaps.

Cops have undoubtedly "inside manipulation" but people that work in security know many drills

Sent from my F3112 using MavicPilots mobile app

 

[Wombat55]

One clue is somewhere in the DJI GO app where there are some geo settings that are exclusive to mainland China... I've met many Chinese that looked down at me and I'm 188 cm tall.

Height is in a large part a matter of nutrition rather than genetics. When I was an Air Force brat growing up in Japan, I was often the tallest person in a Japanese train car. But today when I visit Japan there are usually several people taller than me (5' 9") in a train car. Japanese have gotten taller over the past few decades due to changes in the diet. Chinese will probably get taller, too. You won't hear any "shorty" jokes about them from me.

 

[royalhghnss]

There are very directional band jammers that will force it into RTH. The police in China may have something more "inside" from DJI to force it down at current location perhaps.

I think it was the more inside thing, as it didn't RTH, it landed or went to the police (can't remember).

 

[royalhghnss]

This is not my story, but here is what happened to one flyer:

A little over a month ago, I visited my girlfriend's family in Harbin in China, and went to see the ice sculpture park there. I flew it around at night for about 5 minutes, getting some amazing shots I thought, when I suddenly lost all control. The controller disconnected and didn't respond at all, even though I was in visible line of sight. It did reconnect for half a second, and the last image I saw was it hovering above some guy that was looking at it. I figured he was probably wondering why that loud thing was hovering right next to him.

So here I was freaking out, trying to figure out wtf happened to my $1000 piece of equipment. I could still see the lights as it was descending (or maybe flying away. It was hard to tell), but I couldn't figure out where exactly it was. So we started running around trying to guess where it maybe landed.

Finally, we ask the security, and they somehow took control of it and took it out of the sky and confiscated it. They took me in for questioning for an hour, during which they made me go to the DJI app and delete the photos and videos on my phone, and then took the SD card out of the drone and said they'd give it back in a week.

I looked it over and everything looked fine, and the next day it flew just fine. However, once I landed the next day, I noticed a prop was actually broken in the middle somehow. I only really looked at the tips because I figured they'd show damage first. I'm really lucky it flew just fine with a slightly damaged prop.

And once I got the SD card back, they apparently deleted everything. Even the footage I took the day before that had nothing to do with the ice sculpture festival. And since I was traveling, of course I didn't back it up once I got back to my girlfriend's house. I was really looking forward to that footage too. The police said they wouldn't delete anything, they would just check it over and they didn't want any footage to get out before some event aired on TV.

So I took my drone on a vacation trip I was really looking forward to, and all I ended up with was a broken prop, a wasted hour of my time, and a massive amount of disappointment.