www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/29/drone-...ersit_n_1638100.html

This is the same technique used in Die Hard 2 to trick airline pilots into crashing into the tarmac.

@Dneif... did not know they used this technique in Die Hard 2, been so long since I seen that movie lol, might be where the University got the idea. Now the world knows what is required to bring a drone down though, bet the guys up top are just thrilled at that, the HP had to go telling everyone.

thats the stupidest looking aircraft. imagine that goofy motherfucker blows you up. how embarrassing.

In Die Hard 2, the terrorists had hijaacked the communication abilities of the airport and were able to send bogus nav data to the airplanes. The terrorists would send data to the airplane telling them their altitude was 2000' higher than it actually was, so when the airplane come in for the landing it would crash into the tarmac.

With this, it appears rather than jam the signal, they do a man in the middle attack sending bogus location data to the aircraft. If the navigation system was designed so that if the GPS system was jammed and couldn't receive a signal, it'd rely on other fallback methods, such as radar or what have you. If it's using GPS and receiving location data from a spoofed source, then it's possible it could be controlled like a marionette, cause it to crash or possibly land if the attacker had sophisticated knowledge of the device and it's operator...

I wonder if this technique was used to get a stealth fighter to land in Iran. Iran is on good terms with China, and I read reports that China had access to malfunctioned drones that crashed in Afghanistan via the Taliban. One far reaching conclusion would be that these billion dollar machines have gaping holes in their design that would allow academics and others organizations with access to the hardware an exploit.

It's interesting from an academic point of view, but also frustrating that bilions of dollars are funnelled into complex 'death machines' (800+ billion a year) and at the same time argue that universal health care (3 billion) is unafordable, and these wonderful pieces of technology are buggy as fuck. See also: the F22 and the International Date Line