

US armed drones found infected with computer virus - denzil_correa
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/22/1102194/-US-drones-found-infected-with-computer-virus

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crikli
Source article from which DK and other sources extemporized:
[http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/exclusive-
computer-v...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/exclusive-computer-
virus-hits-drone-fleet/)

~~~
eli
That's actually the same story linked in the first sentence of the post. It's
from last October and it ran in Wired first.

There was a lot of healthy skepticism on HN when it was first posted
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085004>

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metaobject
I cannot believe that they would use Windows to control these drones. I wonder
how the due diligence went down for that decision. It's reassuring to hear
that they switched the controllers to Linux.

I don't use Windows for work or development purposes (I have 2 windows
machines at home used as iTunes machines), so my question is: are there
Windows versions available that are stripped down? It just seems that the
amount of exploits that come out per week/month/year for Windows would get in
the way of operational missions.

~~~
gouranga
I'm not joking here but windows is absolutely rock solid and is as secure as
any Unix variant if you set it up correctly. If you don't, it's Swiss cheese.
Windows is only insecure because they've set it up like that to aid consumers.

They do stripped down versions such as windows embedded. You can strip a
desktop install down to virtually nothing as well and it is very secure. It is
however beyond most people to do so.

By changing the platform they've effectively saved their butts by pointing at
the vendor. The real problem is incompetence and cost cutting.

I predict rootkit drones next as they haven't actually solved the real
problem.

edit for the morons who blindly Downvote this: I spent a number of years
building secure systems for the UK MoD. There were no attack vectors at all of
any kind human or network, so the fact they were infected was purely
incompetence.

~~~
ktizo
_Windows is only insecure because they've set it up like that to aid
consumers._

Indeed. For where would your average windows consumer be, without a useful
selection of botnets, keyloggers and trojans, installed silently for their
browsing convenience?

That said, I know you can reasonably lock down the older versions of windows
NT, and really lock down many DOS variants, but I would say that the main
reason for this is because they have been thoroughly studied and patched,
rather than through careful design in the first place.

~~~
gouranga
TBH I actually run a 100% not locked down default install of Windows 7 with
Microsoft security essentials, IE9 and outlook.

I've never once had a virus, worm or trojan.

It's perfectly secure. The main issue is that most of the fuckwits out there
click OK without reading or understanding every time. How's MS supposed to
deal with idiots?

I'm actually sitting here with a ThinkGeek PEBKAC T-shirt on appropriately.

~~~
antidoh
"I've never once had a virus, worm or trojan."

And probably no one ever wanted to attack you as a specific, known individual.
They probably would have succeeded.

------
SchizoDuckie
Next to being baffled that this comes out into the world, I can only laugh at
this. Be careful what you wish for USA, You want cyber warfare? You just got
it.

Just imagine, somebody with the intention to do harm having control over
drones like that. It would be the ultimate remote strike, using their own
systems, thát would rock their world the world!

~~~
gaius
You don't deserve that downvote. Obama has been crowing in the NYT about his
sK1Lz in cyberwarfare against the Iranians. What did he expect to happen?

~~~
natrius
My understanding is that U.S. cyberwarfare ended up in the NYT because of
leaks and good journalism, not because Obama was touting it.

~~~
gaius
In an election year, when the Obama administration has a track record of zero
tolerance of leaks and whistleblowers?

~~~
natrius
A quick Googling uncovered the controversy about the leaks, which I wasn't
aware of.

[http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/06/news/la-pn-mccain-
ca...](http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/06/news/la-pn-mccain-calls-for-
investigation-of-obama-administration-leaks-20120606)

------
ck2
Can you imagine what is going to happen when every police force in the USA
starts blowing their budget on domestic drones next year?

~~~
antidoh
Yeah, their budgets will increase.

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andygcook
I think it's pretty obvious who did it...Skynet!

