Drones could be vulnerable to cyber attack

Expert warns that although drones could have myriad uses, they are not immune to cyber attacks.

Hamad Musabeh explains developments in security to delegates during the Cyber Security Conference 2014 in Dubai. Satish Kumar / The National

DUBAI // Working with drones started out as a hobby for Hamad Musabeh and some of his friends in electrical engineering.

What began as a pastime for him is now, however, attracting interest from governments and industry.

Drones are now used for package delivery – by Amazon – and government services, as in the UAE.

Elsewhere, they are utilising infrared technology to inspect solar panels for dust and are flown by civil-defence teams to inspect fires in buildings.

But as military grade technology used in drones becomes cheaper and more accessible, proper security must be in place to prevent hacking, said Mr Musabeh, senior director of security planning and design at du.

Drone technology is lightly regulated, and countries are at different stages of establishing rules, he told the du Cyber Security Conference.

“The technology evolved so fast, it caught everyone off guard.

“The main push is that the commercial market wants it now.”

Drone systems are complex, including a ground station command control for the vehicle and the various systems communicating with it in the sky, such as global positioning systems (GPS), he said.

However, video taken by drones could be illegally intercepted as it may not be encrypted, and hardware was available to capture video and decode it.

Another potential problem was a GPS attack, since a drone is dependent on this system to take its next action, said Mr Musabeh.

This means that a hacker could, theoretically, slowly and gradually direct the drone to go somewhere else.

“Like drones, other new technologies may seem too advanced for an attack, but this is not the best way to approach security,” he said.

“Just by being under the blanket of, ‘I am secure because I am obscure’, it’s not enough.”