Security Quadcopter UAV Drones Maleware Hacked and Controlled Through Backdoor of Softwares

The use of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) called Drones is rapidly transforming the way we go to war. Drones were once used for land surveillance, Delivering Pizza's, then equipped with bombs that changed the way nations conduct war and last year, these hovering drones were also used to hack Smartphones.

Recently, a security researcher has found a backdoor in the Parrot AR Drones manufactured by a French-based company, that could allow a malicious hacker to remotely hijacked the radio controlled flying quadcopter helicopter.

The Parrot AR Drone, revealed at the International CES 2010 in Las Vegas, is a quadricopter helicopter which you can control with your smartphone or tablet. It features two built-in cameras, is easy to fly, and can be controlled without too much danger of it flipping over or smashing into things.

FIRST EVER MALWARE FOR DRONES

Security researcher, Rahul Sasi claimed to have developed the first ever backdoor malware for AR drone ARM Linux system, dubbed Maldrone [MALware DRONE].

Maldrone can be used to remotely hijack drones, as shown in a video demonstration below published by the hacker.

"In this we would show infecting a drone with Maldrone and expecting a reverse tcp connection from drone. Once connection is established we can interact with the software as well as drivers/sensors of drone directly. There is an existing AR drone piloting program. Our backdoors kills the autopilot and takes control. The Backdoor is persistent across resets," video explained.

According to the researcher, Maldrone can interact with the drone’s device drivers and sensors silently and allow the hacker to control the drone remotely. As a result, Maldrone could be used to conduct remote surveillance.

Rahul said the Maldrone could also be used to attack other drone makers as well. However, the backdoor could be exploited within a wireless range.

DRONE CRASHES ON WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS

Drones has highlighted the growing security threat posed by small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Just recently, a 2-foot quadcopter drone crashed onto the White House grounds in the early hours of Monday morning, when the president and first lady Michelle Obama were in India.

A government employee told the Secret Service that he lost control of the quadcopter drone before it crashed on the grounds of the White House. However, no one at the White House were in danger.

Source Material

http://thehackernews.com/2015/01/MalDrone-backdoor-drone-malware.html

Advanced Photographic Tools Unmanned Autonomous Underwater Robotic Vehicles Uncover Deep-sea Ecosystem Diversity at ‘Landscape’ Scales

""Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) have used advanced photographic tools in an unmanned Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) to make major advancements in estimating deep-sea ecosystem diversity at 'landscape' scales.

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By using a camera on the Autosub6000 AUV to take a continuous stream of high resolution photographs of life on the sea floor, this new method revealed a tenfold increase in the precision of deep sea ecosystem diversity estimates relative to the use of scientific trawling. Autosub6000 was developed by the NOC as part of an ongoing project. This research showed that Anemones were the most abundant animal on the sea floor, information that has been previously missed from trawling because they became damaged in the nets and rendered unrecognisable.

Dr Kirsty Morris, the lead author of this research, published in Limnology and Oceanography: Methods, said "This is an important step towards the automated imaging of the deep sea, which is essential for understanding the complexity of seafloor biodiversity and its future management"

Once the images were taken they were analysed to identify the types of creatures seen, calculate their relative abundances and estimate their size relative to the image pixels. This allows for an overall estimate of the biomass to be calculated and compared with later/earlier images in order to monitor how these ecosystems change over time.

As climate change and potential exploitive pressure of seafloor resources impact the ocean, it is increasingly important to better document deep sea marine biodiversity and ecosystems. Currently trawling is one of the most common methods of assessing what creatures live in these habitats; however trawling has drawbacks in terms of poor accuracy and a bias in sampling seafloor biota. The new method, developed at the NOC, will substantially improve the accuracy and efficiency of sea floor surveying.

This method was developed and tested as part of the NERC funded AESA (Autonomous Ecological Surveying of the Abyss) project. It is currently being used to map the proposed marine conservation zone, know as Haig-Fras, as well as to estimate the seafloor carbon dynamics within the vicinity. This project will involve evaluating the role of habitat and sediment type, as well as discovering which animals live there.

Dr Henry Ruhl, co-ordinator of the AESA project, said "We are creating photographic maps of animals on the seafloor, which can scale up to the size of cities. This allows us to understand links between ecology, ecological functioning, and human impact in a way that was not previously feasible.""

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150112093125.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmost_popular+%28Most+Popular+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

SpaceX's Robotic Dragon Resupply Spacecraft Arrives at International Space Station with Groceries

""SpaceX's robotic Dragon resupply spacecraft has arrived at the International Space Station after a two-day orbital chase.

NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, commander of the station's current Expedition 42, grappled Dragon using the orbiting outpost's huge robotic arm at 5:54 a.m. EST (1054 GMT) on Monday (Jan. 12). Crew members will next install Dragon on the Earth-facing port of the station's Harmony module.

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Once installation is complete, astronauts will begin offloading the 5,200 pounds (2,360 kilograms) of food, spare parts and scientific experiments that Dragon brought up on this mission, the fifth of 12 unmanned cargo flights SpaceX plans to fly to the space station under a $1.6 billion deal with NASA. [See photos from SpaceX's fifth Dragon cargo launch]

SpaceX launched the Dragon capsule early Saturday (Jan. 10) atop a Falcon 9 rocket that lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. After the rocket sent Dragon on its way, SpaceX attempted to bring the Falcon 9's first stage back to Earth for a pinpoint landing on an "autonomous spaceport drone ship" in the Atlantic Ocean, as part of the company's effort to develop reusable-rocket technology.

The rocket stage came down on target but hit the drone ship too hard Saturday. SpaceX will try the bold maneuver again on future launches, company representatives said.

Dragon is unmanned, but the capsule did bring a number of living passengers up to the orbiting lab. For example, it hauled an experiment that will look at how microgravity affects the wound-healing abilities of flatworms, and two others that will study how plants grow in space.""

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http://news.discovery.com/space/private-spaceflight/spacex-dragon-capsule-delivers-supplies-to-space-station-150112.htm