Military universal kill switch for drones

[dwallersv]

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 !!

I have no doubt the US Military has done extensive R&D for counter-measures on all prosumer drones (DJI, Yuneec, 3DR, etc.), and when each new one comes out, they get it and start working on it right away.

Even the Spark.

 

[dwallersv]

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

This is true, but not as easy in practice than you might think.

Turning it off is going to cause some accidents, maybe even loss of life. This has to be balanced against whatever threat is being (maybe) defeated by disabling it temporarily.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

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

And GLONASS, Galileo and Beidou will be there. In the meantime the banking system halts, cell towers don't sync, etc. (much dependence on GPS for timing, you see...)

 

[SkunkWerx's]

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.

Alan , I like all your reply's and agree with you 100% on the 256 bit encryption issue that's why spoofing the GPS signal would be the best method in my opinion to defeat a malicious drone and yes the Military can do this, I doubt very much it can be done by a Sunday afternoon hobbyist lolllll
Landing by pointing and jamming the signal has been online a while now it is just a youtube entertainment video to me, The company that made the video claims to be working on it Still
What a Sunday afternoon hobbyist can do is what I mentioned in an earlier post ---- just point at it to cause a conflict with the OA sensors or the VPS to run down the battery then watch it drop --- the simple things to bring down a drone I don't like to speak of on a public forum because it gives jerks ideas that would go out just to see if the methods do work and it's not going to be there drone that they will be doing it too !!

 

[bunzik]

You guys just give dji idea to make a kill switch and sell it to the highest bidder

 

[SkunkWerx's]

You guys just give dji idea to make a kill switch and sell it to the highest bidder

You gotta point there !

 

[dwallersv]

You guys are funny... What do you think DJI wants to do: Make money, or control our drones?

All of the hundreds and hundreds of posts about all this NFZ, kill-switch, etc. stuff really, truly comes down to that.

 

[Aotearoa Kiwi]

Lots of ideas here, but I think if the military wanted your drone out of the way in a hurry, they are probably most likely to use something on the spot at the time, I think that would most likely be a sniper bullet to the drone!

 

[Maxheadspace]

Mavic Pro is manufactured by a Chinese company. If they did secretly add a military kill switch, do you think they would share secret defense technology with Australia?

 

[AlanTheBeast]

Lots of ideas here, but I think if the military wanted your drone out of the way in a hurry, they are probably most likely to use something on the spot at the time, I think that would most likely be a sniper bullet to the drone!

Canadian sniper of course.

 

[zulufriend]

During the visit of the Pope to Portugal on May 13, there was a temporary no fly zone established over the area he was visiting and the media stated that the police was going to use a anti-drone system with obviously they didn't explain how it worked.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

During the visit of the Pope to Portugal on May 13, there was a temporary no fly zone established over the area he was visiting and the media stated that the police was going to use a anti-drone system with obviously they didn't explain how it worked.

No "it". They would use at least one of these:

- rf jammers
- drones with nets
- projectiles with nets
- eagles and hawks
- high powered lasers
- high power, narrow beam EMP devices.

The police would do well to pick at least two differing methods.

 

[moonlitnite]

Well said, Alan! Practically speaking, brute force methods as jamming are practical, affordable and effective. The notion of simultaneously spoofing DJI's newer GPS and GLONASS implementations, or WiFi paired transmitter-receiver using frequency-hopped spread spectrum technology are both inherently difficult to spoof.
I would profess that for DJI's older drones (Phantoms, etc) that solely using a single GPS implementation, spoofing is conceptually possible from a close range (NEARBY OVERHEAD transmitter). If you're into conspiracy theories thinking everyday law enforcement uses this technology against hobby UAVs, you might enjoy this unlisted video (start playing at 4:40):

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[AlanTheBeast]

No need. I was involved in systems integration many years ago spec'ing P/Y code GPS for various programs. This included (in some cases) CRPA antennas that could throw a null [1] towards a jammer or spoofer to protect the GPS (even though P code alone is quite robust and Y code cannot be spoofed w/o the keys - which change weekly).

Much easier to spoof C/A code of course, but then the jammer or spoofer has to have legal permission to do so. AFAIK, in the US, only the military has such permission and this is always preceded by NOTAM. (At least one trucker has been fined in excess of $30K for using a GPS jammer because he didn't want his company following him). And as you say while it's feasible to spoof the GPS doing GLONASS, Galileo and Beidou all at the same time would be quite a feat. (DJI drones will have this in time).

Spoofing is hard:

• Need to know, accurately, where the drone is in ECEF coordinates
• Need to synthesize a model of satellites with the correct SVN/PRN's, orbital positions and plausible ephemeris (start with an actual copy, of course which is trivial to acquire)
• Need to initialize the "spoof" to correspond with that position
  • Said spoofing radio power has to overcome the legitimate received signals
• Need to then know what the operator intent was
• Need to then create a "path" of change so the drone believes it's following operator intent.
• Compute the pseudo ranges for the positions you want the drone to believe it's at
• Continuously track the drone's real position while generating the fake positions you want it to "believe" it is at.
• In GLONASS and GPS (and soon to come Galileo and Beidou) coordiante systems and signals
• And whatever else I've forgotten about

As we say in Quebec, "Lève-toi de bonne heure."

The math for the above is "trivial" (for somewhat higher values of trivial), but the foreknowledge needed to execute it is in the realm of high accuracy detection, positioning and advanced telepathy.

[1] "throw a null" is a term of art that really means phase adjust the antenna to be especially insensitive in a given direction so the jammer or spoofer's signal won't get into the front end of the receiver.

Edit: grammar; additional detail, spelling.

 

[dwallersv]

Nobody said spoofing is easy.

Remember who we're talking about here, and the resources available.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

Nobody said spoofing is easy.

Remember who we're talking about here, and the resources available.

And even then, they're just not _that_ available.

 

[dwallersv]

And even then, they're just not _that_ available.

Well, I was referring to R&D resources, which are abundant in the Military (or by proxy working in the private sector on classified military R&D).

The point is, we're talking about the institution that has the greatest resources, motivation, and mission on this planet to be developing countermeasures -- including spoofing.

Anyone here that doesn't believe there are dozens of engineers working on exactly that right now, and pick apart every new drone that comes on the market looking for weaknesses, exploits, etc. -- do not know how this whole measure/countermeasure thing works in the world.

Just like rooting/jailbreaking phones, I'd be surprised if exploits aren't found on every commercial drone brought to market. After all, security from this sort of thing is not a high priority for drones, like it is for phones.

To be clear, I don't actually know that anything at all for certain is going on. I'm just 100% sure it is.

 

[Andrew F]

Just put your mobile into Airplane mode and there is no kill switch for sure.

Incorrect. It would be a code on the same frequency that has bypass authority. No permission needed.

 

[sar104]

Well, I was referring to R&D resources, which are abundant in the Military (or by proxy working in the private sector on classified military R&D).

The point is, we're talking about the institution that has the greatest resources, motivation, and mission on this planet to be developing countermeasures -- including spoofing.

Anyone here that doesn't believe there are dozens of engineers working on exactly that right now, and pick apart every new drone that comes on the market looking for weaknesses, exploits, etc. -- do not know how this whole measure/countermeasure thing works in the world.

Just like rooting/jailbreaking phones, I'd be surprised if exploits aren't found on every commercial drone brought to market. After all, security from this sort of thing is not a high priority for drones, like it is for phones.

To be clear, I don't actually know that anything at all for certain is going on. I'm just 100% sure it is.

Actually I think that it is most unlikely that significant resources are being devoted to this problem when so many effective low-tech countermeasures exist. The level of threat represented by consumer UAVs is just not that great.

 

[MoonstruckView]

Holy Cow (there is that better?), this is a new world I am entering in, Isn't it!