As Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) continue to advance and play an ever growing role in modern warfare, could cyber vulnerabilities pose a potential pitfall? With drone technology rapidly advancing and allowing for the production of truly autonomous UAVs, concerns over these flying terminators being hacked become more legitimate. Here are a couple of articles to give you a little flavor on the topic. 1) Flying Hacker Contraption Hunts Other Drones, Turns Them Into Zombies, an article by Dan Gooding for Ars Technica released in December, discusses how “hacker drones” are being developed and tested to target and gain control of other UAVs. 2) Hacking the Drone War’s Secret History by Wired details how rudimentary programming and hacking skills can allow access to drone’s communication feeds. Having friendly drones falling into the control of opposition forces is a scary thought.

– by Ben Volcsko, Research Assistant