Thursday 13 October 2011

Air Force Insists: Drone Cockpit Virus Just a ‘Nuisance’

The U.S. Air Force revealed new details Wednesday about the virus that’s been infecting the remote cockpits of its drone fleet — and insisted, despite reports from their own personnel, that the infection was properly and easily contained.
In a statement — the military’s first official, on-the-record acknowledgement of the virus — the Air Force insisted that the malware was “more of a nuisance than an operational threat.” The ability of drone pilots to remotely fly the aircraft from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada “remained secure throughout the incident.”
The armed drone has become America’s weapon and surveillance tool of choice in warzones from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Yemen. So when Danger Room reported on Friday that Creech security specialists had spent the last two weeks fighting off an infection in the drones’ remote cockpits, there was an almost instantaneous media uproar.
It also caught off guard the 24th Air Force, the unit that’s supposed to be in charge of the air service’s cybersecurity, multiple sources involved with Air Force network operations told Danger Room. “When your article came out,” one of those sources said. “it was like, ‘What is this?’”
In its Wednesday statement (.docx), the Air Force said that was flat wrong — that the 24th knew all along...
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Noah Shachtman @'Wired'

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