Hackers Take to the Skies
Photo: The Rabbit-Hole Blog; Perkins and Tassey with the WASP
Researchers Richard Perkins and Mike Tassey unveiled a new drone that takes cyber snooping to new heights — literally.
During this week’s Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas, the two security consultants for Wall Street presented their remote-controlled spy plane, which can steal information from vulnerable Wi-Fi networks, initiate Denial-of-Service attacks and intercept mobile phone calls. Perkins and Tassey call it the WASP — short for Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform.
They asked attendees, “What could a low-observable autonomous aircraft carrying 10 pounds of cyber attack tools do to your organization’s networks, your nation’s critical infrastructure or worse, if it were carrying something unspeakable, what would that do to expectations of public safety?”
By converting a surplus Army drone, Perkins and Tassey showed that anyone with the appropriate skills can build this “quiet, cheap and able to be built in a garage using hand tools” machinery.
The hacker drone uses an International Mobile Subscriber Identity catcher and antenna to disguise itself as a cellphone base station for eavesdropping. In tests, Tassey and Perkins showed the drone could then listen in, record phone calls and transmit the data over the internet.
They warned that if they did it, others can too.
However, it also has the potential to provide assistance to those in stressful situations. The drones could be used for providing emergency cellular access to regions hit by a disaster, they explained in their presentation.
According to its website, WASP weighs about 13 pounds and has a length of 76 inches. The drone has a maximum altitude of around 22,000 feet and a flight time of about 30 to 45 minutes.
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