Pentagon-sponsored engineers have developed a system to shield unmanned aerial vehicles from cyber-attacks. It sounds the alert if a drone starts doing something that it is not supposed to do. Called System-Aware Secure Sentinel, the new system detects “illogical behavior” compared to how the aircraft normally operates.
“Detections can serve to initiate automated recovery actions and alert operators of the attack,” said Barry Horowitz, a systems and information engineer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, in a statement. Apparently, the system is meant to prevent embarrassing situations like the loss of a US spy drone in December 2011 to Iran. A CIA RQ-170 Sentinel drone was brought down after what the Iranians claimed to have been a hacker attack as it was flying in the country’s airspace.
INC News, 06/12/2014
