Kidnapping a Mavic?

[Wombat55]

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.

Don't know what the rules are about drones in China, but I'm pretty sure that they significantly more restrictive than in the US. Maybe they had some way of jamming all communications with the drone including GPS communications so that the drone was forced into some sort of fail-safe mode and automatically landed?

As for the memory card, I'm surprised that they didn't just confiscate it, which would have been the surest way of them being sure that there was absolutely no way that any pictures could be recovered.

 

[WheelzWorld]

Hahaha well if they made it, I guess it's for a reason...

RF V16 GPS Tracker Bracket Tracer Holder Locator Support for DJI Mavic Pro Drone GPS stent DJI part-in Parts & Accessories from Toys & Hobbies on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

 

[Oingo Boingo]

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.

First off.... 99.99% of flyaways are user error, pilots not reading the manual, not understanding the limitations of their kit, and flying without following a proper preflight checklist. As far as your controller issue is concerned, the controllers electronically bind with the mavic. Its a certificate type handshake that happens between controller and craft. No chance of you taking soneone elses craft. Its a bit more complicated that the earlier days of racing card with different colour frequencies

 

[mavic6611]

Most fly aways are caused by either not calibrating the compass before take off, or poor firmware updates, and even solar flares which is rare but does happen.

 

[Red_Raven]

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...

With open ftp and telnet servers. Yea. I would trust a trained monkey to do the job.

 

[Red_Raven]

First off.... 99.99% of flyaways are user error, pilots not reading the manual, not understanding the limitations of their kit, and flying without following a proper preflight checklist. As far as your controller issue is concerned, the controllers electronically bind with the mavic. Its a certificate type handshake that happens between controller and craft. No chance of you taking soneone elses craft. Its a bit more complicated that the earlier days of racing card with different colour frequencies

This is simply false. Many/most drones who use network protocols to communicate between user devices have open telnet, or other platforms easily accessible.
Once in the root filesystem, person with absolute minimum network knowledge could do pretty much what he wants.

But I don't think that is causing the fly aways.... The ceo of dji isn't Lex Luther is he. ‍
Chinese supervillan in command over huge evil Corp, selling drones just to steel them back.
I actually like the idea[emoji16][emoji106]

 

[WheelzWorld]

What about a super hero that still them to fix the 60fps issue? [emoji23]

 

[AnzacJack]

The short coming is the GPS. This can be spoofed with the right equipment and then the drone forced into RTH mode. it is in this mode and a GPS hack that the drone can be taken.
This is a proven technique that I have seen demonstrated. (Not a Mavic, but it can be done)
However this is specialised equipment and generally not available to consumer.
However, the OP's concern of being taken by another mavic controller is not a viable thing and most R.C. equipment is safe from this these days

 

[AlanTheBeast]

Use a recovery program - your images/vids may still be there. Just don't write anymore to the card.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

The short coming is the GPS. This can be spoofed with the right equipment and then the drone forced into RTH mode. it is in this mode and a GPS hack that the drone can be taken.
This is a proven technique that I have seen demonstrated. (Not a Mavic, but it can be done)
However this is specialised equipment and generally not available to consumer.
However, the OP's concern of being taken by another mavic controller is not a viable thing and most R.C. equipment is safe from this these days

While spoofing GPS is possible it's a low practicality kind of thing in the wild - not to mention that it can cause all sorts of problems with other GPS users such as cell towers and so on in the area. In the MP you'd need to spoof GPS and GLONASS simultaneously as well... so I'm skeptical of that approach.

 

[GlenT]

Most fly aways are caused by either not calibrating the compass before take off, or poor firmware updates, and even solar flares which is rare but does happen.

Agreed, a large proportion of mishaps occur due to operator error. However with regards to anyone crying wolf over solar flares, not really feasible. To quote Rick VdWielen
Every time a solar flare occurs, you see guys posting images of apps with 'red' on them and telling everyone 'don't fly'.
Your 2.4 GHZ remote transmitter and 5.8 GHZ video return will absolutely, positively NOT be affect by a solar flare. Radio waves which relay on the ionosphere to refract or reflect back to the earth are affected but these are generally under 30 MHZ.
While it is possible that your GPS signal 'might' be confused, I doubt seriously this will occur in a normal flare. When was the last time you where driving your car and your GPS went ape-**** when a solar flare occurred?
And in my experiences, I've never had fewer sats detected when setting the home point prior to flight when a flare was occurring.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

Agreed, a large proportion of mishaps occur due to operator error. However with regards to anyone crying wolf over solar flares, not really feasible. To quote Rick VdWielen
Every time a solar flare occurs, you see guys posting images of apps with 'red' on them and telling everyone 'don't fly'.
Your 2.4 GHZ remote transmitter and 5.8 GHZ video return will absolutely, positively NOT be affect by a solar flare. Radio waves which relay on the ionosphere to refract or reflect back to the earth are affected but these are generally under 30 MHZ.
While it is possible that your GPS signal 'might' be confused, I doubt seriously this will occur in a normal flare. When was the last time you where driving your car and your GPS went ape-**** when a solar flare occurred?
And in my experiences, I've never had fewer sats detected when setting the home point prior to flight when a flare was occurring.

I've had my car GPS go ape for a number of reasons:
-playing the stereo very loudly affected one of my older receivers
-driving near trucks that carry GPS jammers (stands to reason!) - illegal of course.

Solar flares can affect GPS accuracy. Whether this will upset the Mavic Pro is ...

 

[GlenT]

I've had my car GPS go ape for a number of reasons:
-playing the stereo very loudly affected one of my older receivers
-driving near trucks that carry GPS jammers (stands to reason!) - illegal of course.

Solar flares can affect GPS accuracy. Whether this will upset the Mavic Pro is ...

Yeah, I believe that link is an over simplification and is somewhat over exaggerating the phenomenon. They assert that signal loss or increased errors will occur most often at lower latitudes but also at mid latitudes during the Sun set phase. This simply does not happen in real life anymore as implemented algorithms have become more robust. Yes, the ionosphere is impacted due to heavy solar activity causing some geomagnetic interference. But the frequencies are so far apart the net loss of signal strength is minimal.The dual channel (GPS/GLONASS) integration such as that of the Mavic is not effected to any significant degree to cause a "fly away". At worst a possible of loss of accuracy. I have never experienced this even living at 45deg south.

 

[mavic6611]

That's absolutely correct. Like I said it's rare.. But does happen. Lots of these pilots are new to this hobby. So I try to give all of the information I can. It's better to know a little more than a little less I'm sure you will agree

 

[AlanTheBeast]

Yeah, I believe that link is an over simplification and is somewhat over exaggerating the phenomenon. They assert that signal loss or increased errors will occur most often at lower latitudes but also at mid latitudes during the Sun set phase. This simply does not happen in real life anymore as implemented algorithms have become more robust. Yes, the ionosphere is impacted due to heavy solar activity causing some geomagnetic interference. But the frequencies are so far apart the net loss of signal strength is minimal.The dual channel (GPS/GLONASS) integration such as that of the Mavic is not effected to any significant degree to cause a "fly away". At worst a possible of loss of accuracy. I have never experienced this even living at 45deg south.

GPS+GLONASS is not dual frequency for the purpose of ionospheric correction. First of all the signals have to originate from the same point in space to compute iono delays and secondly the signals have to be reasonably far apart in frequency. Otherwise, no iono correction is possible.

GLONASS "L1" lies almost on top of the GPS L1 frequency. For iono correction you need a couple hundred MHz of separation (such as an L1/L2 receiver). And of course, the point of origin of the signal has to be the same - GPS and GLONASS are on (very) separate birds.

In the end the pseudo ranges from the satellites will result in a poor position.

SBAS (WAAS) will compensate for that to some degree - but the error will remain large as during a solar flare everything is very noisy - there's only so much correction SBAS can do when the atmosphere is badly roiled and the iono is inflated.

So what remains is how DJI do their GPS integration which so far seems a bit fumblefisted for various reasons - what contribution there may be to "flyaway" remains to be seen.

45° south is well away from the equator effect. (I'm as far north (a bit more) as you are south).

 

[rightstuffed]

Plenty of capability to take down your little toy.
Counter-UAS Technologies.
Cutting edge and high power = you lose

 

[AnzacJack]

While spoofing GPS is possible it's a low practicality kind of thing in the wild - not to mention that it can cause all sorts of problems with other GPS users such as cell towers and so on in the area. In the MP you'd need to spoof GPS and GLONASS simultaneously as well... so I'm skeptical of that approach.

Be as skeptical as you like. As i said this is not off the shelf stuff. It was a military exercise and i did work with the team doing this so can confirm it can be done despite your skepticism

 

[frankiez]

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...

Just watched a documentary on YouTube called The Age of the Drone. They talked about how hackers can program a drone that can fly near another drone and make it a zombie drone.

 

[erkme73]

Be as skeptical as you like. As i said this is not off the shelf stuff. It was a military exercise and i did work with the team doing this so can confirm it can be done despite your skepticism

I think Iran supposedly took down our 'stealth' drone that's shaped like a boomerang a few years back, using this spoofing technology. The jammed the communication signal, and then provided an 'alternate' stream of GPS data, and basically flew it to where they could capture it. That is, if you believe the public accounts.

 

[Chris23]

Don't they frequency hop?