This startup plans to protect airports by taking over rogue drones in midair

Ron Czapala

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/20/11466368/skysafe-drones-detect-disable-protection

After graduating from MIT with a degree in computer science, Grant Jordan spent four years at the United States Air Force acquiring a particular set of skills, skills that make him very dangerous to drones

Today Jordan and his co-founders are announcing the public launch of SkySafe, a drone protection startup that wants to help facilities secure critical airspace. The company also revealed that it had raised a $3 million round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.
"We don’t just detect, we do the intercept side," says Jordan. "We fully take control of the drone from the operator, it sees us as the legitimate controller, and we can move it to a safe location and land it." SkySafe can "spoof" the drone to hijack control...

Tor

Hmm.. sceptical. First, a drone is autonomous - no controlling signal that can be taken over (if it's remotely controlled it's an RC plane or 'copter). Secondly, contrary to what's claimed by that startup it's not "prohibitively expensive" to add encryption to the remote control link. It's not more difficult or costly than it is to switch from telnet to ssh. The only reason it's not universally done so far for RC is that it hasn't been necessary before.
So what's left is to jam the RC plane/'copter, jam or spoof the GPS reception of the drone, or take them out by force.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

That's a laugh-worthy claim, for sure. They must just assume that everyone is using a 2.4 GHz RC transmitter.

-Phil

xanadu

The thing that interests me the most about these videos is they educate everyone on what not to do. In most cases these half solutions becomes a non-solution the minute they post them online.

erco

Speaking of far-fetched schemes, anybody remember the Phantom Sentinel? IIRC I saw it in ROBOT magazine. This folding, packable military flying boomerang with a fast-spinning camera would be nearly "invisible" and software would stitch the wildly-spinning camera images into a 3D spherical view. Far out.

http://veratech.aero/phantom.html

JasonDorie

One approach that I have seen is to overwhelm the on-board GPS with a different signal. The drone gets confused as to where it is and will either fall or do a "return to home" move. I can't realistically see the approach shown here working well in practice - you can't take over a radio without providing a compatible and MUCH stronger signal, otherwise there's interference. Doing it from a smartphone? Unlikely. The drone shown was probably flown with a bluetooth module attached, which would allow the attack to work, but no one actually does that, precisely for that reason - it's an open security hole.

This whole "drone fever" reminds me of reefer madness from the 60's. It's insane.

Relevant: https://teespring.com/aircraft-identification

erco

JasonDorie wrote: »

Doing it from a smartphone? Unlikely.

Amen. But I wouldn't put it past a few snake oil salesmen to try selling vaunted "Drone Killer/Collector" apps for iPhone & Android. I'm sure lots of people would click & order before the word got out on the scam.