Military universal kill switch for drones

[dwallersv]

Spoofing is the easiest thing to avoid. Encrypt the control signal.

From average joes.

From the NSA, not so much.

Not suggesting the NSA is out there monitoring drone signals. Rather, that the tech to get through most encryption already exists and is not kept secret from other parts of our National Security apparatus; the kind of encryption necessary to secure these signals from the military is too heavy to use in this application. The computing resources necessary are not easily and inexpensively integrated in to the RC and the aircraft.

I've done some work in this area in my career, about 10 years ago.

 

[FatherXmas]

I was in Nassau last week, the USS Iwo Jima was docked at the cruise terminal. There was an Inspire 1 buzzing around, including making some low passes around the ship. I was really surprised the Navy ignored it, figuring out who was flying it was easy, I talked to the guy for several minutes. Point being, I'm not sure the government cares as much about drones as you might think.

 

[wayy510]

lolllllll don't think for one second that the Military can not take down your drone !!
I'm laughing because everyone thinks that DJI's or any other RC system is Bullet Proof lolllll ---- it's Not !!!!!!!
Everyone talks and thinks that special hardware or software is needed to take a drone down ---- Many over think the issue.
There are very SIMPLE ways to make your drone drop like a Rock, I'll mention one ----- a Laser, preferably a Green colored Laser pointer can do it . There is no kill switch built in lolllll

I've seen a "weapon" that looks like a rifle that shoots concentrated radio signals at the drone to sever its connection with the RC.

It required line of sight and could land the drone by pointing downwards.

 

[Jim_bo]

I was in Nassau last week, the USS Iwo Jima was docked at the cruise terminal. There was an Inspire 1 buzzing around, including making some low passes around the ship. I was really surprised the Navy ignored it, figuring out who was flying it was easy, I talked to the guy for several minutes. Point being, I'm not sure the government cares as much about drones as you might think.

I can tell you absolutely, the Navy DOES care about this.

Everyone keeps talking about spoofing or jamming. But that assumes that a user is in control. It really isn't hard to program a waypoint mission that requires no operator input after launch. Effectively, there is nothing to jam or spoof.

Bottom line is, this is not a simple problem.

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

This is DJI NFZ in Woomera.
Guy probably flew in to the Zone.
There were warnings apparently before hand regarding tests.

 

[enohp15]

From average joes.

From the NSA, not so much.

Not suggesting the NSA is out there monitoring drone signals. Rather, that the tech to get through most encryption already exists and is not kept secret from other parts of our National Security apparatus; the kind of encryption necessary to secure these signals from the military is too heavy to use in this application. The computing resources necessary are not easily and inexpensively integrated in to the RC and the aircraft.

I've done some work in this area in my career, about 10 years ago.

No one can Brute force 256bit encryption on a whim. Not even the NSA.

read the following for some prespective
Time and energy required to brute-force a AES-256 encryption key. • r/theydidthemath

 

[dwallersv]

No one can Brute force 256bit encryption on a whim. Not even the NSA.

read the following for some prespective
Time and energy required to brute-force a AES-256 encryption key. • r/theydidthemath

I'm not disagreeing with you about that, I'm disagreeing that the signals is encrypted this securely.

 

[enohp15]

I'm not disagreeing with you about that, I'm disagreeing that the signals is encrypted this securely.

Ah well, then I agree with you completely. I don't think that DJI have encrypted anything to that extent either.

 

[SkunkWerx's]

I work with guys who are interested in developing counter UAS technology for the military. It's not nearly as easy as you think. However, if you know of simple ways to do it, I'd be more than interested to hear about your ideas.

Some members already spoken of Jamming and Spoofing and are on the right track !!
The way to compromise or defeat an electronic device is by electronically compromising it's electronic circuitry or system components.
It does not matter if the drone is in autonomous or semiautonomous flight.
You will find this pdf interesting once you wrap your head around it.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c9d8/5878c56390b614a891d477b90d1b35ceb21b.pdf

 

[mavicn00b]

Probably cheaper and easier to shoot it down then mess with the electronics

 

[Glenno]

Maybe the RAAF are testing their new EA-18G Growler. Guessing it would be quite capable of jamming any 2.4ghz signals. Mavic loses signal due jamming/interference and conducts a RTH landing. No DJI back door or encryption keys required.

 

[SkunkWerx's]

My whole point of posting in this Thread without going too deep into countermeasures was to let people know that there is nothing special about there Hobby drone circuitry or components that are easy to defeat , the technology has been around B4 Drone's were even a thought to invent .
Why people think that a drone is unstoppable is a mystery to me ---- were not in the stone age any more !!

 

[AlanTheBeast]

From average joes.

From the NSA, not so much.

Not suggesting the NSA is out there monitoring drone signals. Rather, that the tech to get through most encryption already exists and is not kept secret from other parts of our National Security apparatus; the kind of encryption necessary to secure these signals from the military is too heavy to use in this application. The computing resources necessary are not easily and inexpensively integrated in to the RC and the aircraft.

I've done some work in this area in my career, about 10 years ago.

The NSA cannot break a shared secret 256 bit encrypted message. They don't own enough universes worth of computing power to do so.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

My whole point of posting in this Thread without going too deep into countermeasures was to let people know that there is nothing special about there Hobby drone circuitry or components that are easy to defeat , the technology has been around B4 Drone's were even a thought to invent .
Why people think that a drone is unstoppable is a mystery to me ---- were not in the stone age any more !!

There are various means to defeat a drone. What I don't agree about is the ability to spoof the signal if it is cheaply encrypted via shared secret 256 bit encryption.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

I've seen a "weapon" that looks like a rifle that shoots concentrated radio signals at the drone to sever its connection with the RC.

It required line of sight and could land the drone by pointing downwards.

The jamming yes. The "landing it by pointing" is just purveyor marketing.

A P4P or MP in that case would just initiate RTH unless the GPS was jammed too. It is a violation of federal law in the US (and many other countries) to jam GPS. Even the military has to post NOTAM's when the do so for training or test purposes.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

I'm not disagreeing with you about that, I'm disagreeing that the signals is encrypted this securely.

It's in DJI's best interest to encrypt the signal for the simple case of pairing aircraft to RC and to avoid theft or liability due to cheap spoofing.

As to "this securely" it is so cheap to be hyper secure that once you decide to encrypt you may as well go hard.

Shared key crytpo is cheap (processing wise) in both key generation and in the encryption/decryption stages. What is more complex is dealing with dropouts that occur and re-syncing, but that can be designed in. Since the control link is relatively low bandwidth, there is oodles of time to deal with such. The downlink video and data can likewise be encrypted.

Generating a shared key from two 256 bit shared secrets would take about 8 machine cycles with an ARM processor using ordinary registers. Some ARM's have special crypto register/instruction sets that would cut that to a few cycles. Trivial. Likewise for encrypt, decrypt.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

Some members already spoken of Jamming and Spoofing and are on the right track !!
The way to compromise or defeat an electronic device is by electronically compromising it's electronic circuitry or system components.
It does not matter if the drone is in autonomous or semiautonomous flight.
You will find this pdf interesting once you wrap your head around it.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c9d8/5878c56390b614a891d477b90d1b35ceb21b.pdf

I am very familiar with the subject. The spoofer could play games like: Hmm, he probably has RTH set where he is, so let's make "there" "here". Jam the control link, spoof the GPS space and off the drone goes to the new "there" which is "here". Seize the drone and remove its video data cards. Send a form to the owner on how to apply for an appointment to make the case to have the drone returned sometime next year.

This takes a lot of equipment and ability to put in practice in the field. The further away from spoofer to target, the more power is needed to overcome the real signal at the GPS receiver. Given DJI's crappy GPS receivers, in the presence of spoofing it might simply lose track and go into ATTI. Also of course, the receiver on board does GLONASS. And soon Galileo. And soon Beidou. That's a lot of spoof complexity to pull together.

There are legal issues (that spoof signal is going to affect a lot of people given its power - and the control link as well) so such would be restricted to military use when there is a genuine threat.

When drones begin using serious IMU's (not the cheap ones on board at present), no amount of spoofing or jamming short of an EMI pulse are going to stay the drone from its appointed rounds ... and such drones will use GPS with perhaps more jam/spoof resistant antennas and receivers.

In the war of defense over offence, when defense makes improvements offense always overcomes over time.

 

[Big Fil]

They could just light off a nuke in the upper atmosphere and any drone would come falling out of the sky. Not likely but they could do it lol.

 

[Flycaster]

That's why we don't get access to "the good stuff" the military gets to play with...

 

[ascension]

I.....and such drones will use GPS with perhaps more jam/spoof resistant antennas and receivers.

In the war of defense over offence, when defense makes improvements offense always overcomes over time.

The US military can turn off the GPS world in very short time.