Pwn the Drones presentation at HOPE

30 Jul 2012

Last week my colleague (and fellow @drones operator) Trevor and I had the opportunity to present at the HOPE9 conference at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. It was an amazing conference and I was really honored to get to speak there.

Our presentation was titled “Pwn the Drones: A Survey of UAV Hacks and Exploits,” and covered three major points:

• Drones are already in widespread use, and that is set to expand dramatically over the next few years.
• They do not have the best safety record, and have been compromised in attacks on their ground networks, GPS modules, data transmission, and in kinetic attacks on the aircraft itself. Related systems, such as the control satellites, have also been exploited.
• Drones have also been used to deliver payloads in other unusual hacks and exploits, by activists, artists, law enforcement agents, and others.

I’ve already cleaned up the talk once to give a shorter version at dorkbot sf. It’s so important that information about the capabilities of — and weaknesses in — this drone technology gets more widely understood as these get deployed, so I’m happy to do what I can to help that endeavor.