'We're Not Being Paranoid': US Warns Of Spy Dangers Of Chinese-Made Drones (npr.org) 146
Drones have become an increasingly popular tool for industry and government. But the Department of Homeland Security is warning that drones manufactured by Chinese companies could pose security risks, including that the data they gather could be stolen. From a report: The department sent out an alert on the subject on May 20, and a video on its website notes that drones in general pose multiple threats, including "their potential use for terrorism, mass casualty incidents, interference with air traffic, as well as corporate espionage and invasions of privacy." "We're not being paranoid," the video's narrator adds. Most drones bought in the U.S. are manufactured in China, with most of those drones made by one company, DJI Technology. Lanier Watkins, a cyber-research scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Information Security Institute, said his team discovered vulnerabilities in DJI's drones. "We could pull information down and upload information on a flying drone," Watkins said. "You could also hijack the drone." The vulnerabilities meant that "someone who was interested in, you know, where a certain pipeline network was or maybe the vulnerabilities in a power utilities' wiring might be able to access that information," he noted.
Cars (Score:1, Offtopic)
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For the remotely controllable ones (i.e. virtually any car with drive-by-wire control systems and a network connection) that's certainly true. Well, air traffic and espionage are probably more of a challenge - but just imagine the chaos that could be sown if someone hacked every drive-by-wire car in the country to simultaneously engage maximum acceleration while disabling all driver inputs. Or just the cars of a few key individuals that opposed the hacker's (or their employer's) objectives.
If the cars hav
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their potential use for terrorism, mass casualty incidents, interference with air traffic, as well as corporate espionage and invasions of privacy.
Those have been real concerns since the inventions of cellular telephones, and the internet. And they will be pressing concerns when self-driving cars become more commonplace.
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Re: Why do left wingers always blame inanimate too (Score:1)
Re: Why do left wingers always blame inanimate to (Score:2)
But muh SCIENCE(tm)!!!!!1!!!?!1!!!!
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Cars: their potential use for terrorism, mass casualty incidents, interference with air traffic, as well as corporate espionage and invasions of privacy.
You joke, but cars are becoming increasingly hackable. The only Chinese-made cars I know of in the US are some of the Volvo lines. So far, no one's found a way to use one for espionage, but it's only a matter of time.
Re: Cars (Score:2)
I was under the impression that (almost?) all cars for sale today are equipped with networked microphone and camera in the cockpit. Ostensibly for OnStar-style driver assistance services. But also, quite obviously, for surveillance of the driver and passengers.
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The Huawie-ism of ... (Score:2, Insightful)
DJI.
It's a working anti-competitive strategy.
The planet is reverting to nationalism and isolationism for reasons of US Capitalistic Party.
Can't outperform them? Fake news their asses with fearmongering. Claim "national security."
Think of the children.
Re:The Huawie-ism of ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh. I thought capitalism was why we were building in China. Now it's why we don't want to?
It's almost like the profoundly ignorant throw it up as the evil for any political reason.
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According to the long term bond market the world economy is about to collapse anyway. So who the hell cares if Trump starts a war with China we are all fucked anyway. Carry on wingnuts, have at it, you are all doomed along with your crappy economic war against China. There won't be any drones to buy in five years time because the world economy is about to collapse and getting enough to eat and not die today will be your primary entertainment.
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I thought capitalism was why we were building in China. Now it's why we don't want to?
There's no reason why it couldn't be both, circumstances change. Only one of those things represents a free market, but capitalism doesn't require that.
Of course, the parent didn't say anything about Capitalism being a reason for anything. He blamed a political party, and he probably meant the Republicans given that this China bullshit is Trump's baby.
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Fake news is no worse than wishful idealistic news.
I do appreciate that you admit to posting in the interests of DJI.
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naturally nationalistic
isolationist
5000 years
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s/the planet is/humans are/
FTFY
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Actually moron the banking sector almost collapsed in 2008 and the "people" are so fucked off with paying off the debt created by it for the last ten years that they would gladly elect any scrotum with a bit of fighting talk about blaming black people, Jews or Mexicans for all their troubles because they are genuinely fed up with business as usual. That is why you have an orange cretin in the White house who wants to declare war on the rest of the world. It keeps him in power by feeding all those unhappy pe
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The "National Security" threat seems to be having less and less meaning.
If these devices are spying on us, instead of stopping them, bring them in push them to everyone. There will just be too much data for China to process.
China is really busy monitoring its citizens to make sure they are following the party line, what are they going to do when they find out that Americans are not following the Party Line... Nothing.
Now if there is a real threat, we shouldn't be using foreign equipment from any country fr
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We knew DJI would probably be next, after Huawei. It's easy to predict who is a "national security threat" by looking at their market share and economic importance to the Chinese economy.
This is a proper movie-plot threat. You have a drone using a local non-IP radio link somewhere... And somehow the Chinese hack it remotely. Kinda like those crime dramas were the good guys can somehow access any CCTV camera anywhere, even if they are just locally wired in to a dedicated receiver over an analogue link.
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It likely isn't even as much as hacking them, but right now, I do believe there is concern that flight data and images are often sent THROUGH DJI's servers in China.
That data can easily be collected there and analyzed, and well....AI stuff is getting better and better at picking out the good golden data from the cruft.
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I'll give you a prediction. China's retaliation will be cutting off the US supply of rare earths.
The day after Trump announced the sanctions on Huawei, Xi visited a rare earth magnet factory unexpectedly.
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The US has them but the mines all went out of business. They could be opened again but it will take time, years in fact, and be seen as a risky proposition because when the trade war is over they will be unprofitable again. So in the medium term there will be a big shortage.
Due to the shortage companies will be forced to manufacture in China rather than in the US just so they can get the raw materials.
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Yes the US could start mining them again but the last time they did that China started selling again and the American mines had to shut down because they could not compete. So from the POV of the mine owner trying again may not make a lot of sense. If America really was not getting any rare earth materials though it might be very profitable in the short term because they could charge very high prices to American manufacturers with their monopoly on rare earth minerals.
America is large enough and has enough
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Can't outperform them? Fake news their asses with fearmongering.
Meanwhile, China's probably over there like "Americans think toy drone is threat! Ha ha ha! They should see our MILITARY DRONE!"
This administration is such an embarrassment.
Re: The Huawie-ism of ... (Score:2)
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Rather fractured for an "insightful" mod.
You forgot to mention "projection".
However, looking it over again, now I think you were fishing for a funny mod. Among the main improvements the moderation system needs is a convenient display of multidimensional mods, such as insightful humor.
Re: The Huawie-ism of ... (Score:2)
What we're seeing is factional infighting among elements of the Establishment.
The Financialist faction and Progressive faction remain in favor of offshoring 100% of American industrial capacity. The former favor this because they directly profit from it. The latter favor it because mass unemployment and the immiserating of the working class are useful weapons in their cultural war against traditional values.
Now we're seeing major pushback from the National Security faction. The aforementioned factions would
cant they just buy their own? (Score:2)
So why cant the would-be terrorist buy their own $2k drone to do their own surveillance rather than wait around for one to get near where they need in order to hijack it? Those that bankroll terrorists are usually wealthy such as saudi sheiks. Aside from a rich uncle daddy-warbucks they seem to be using tools like ransomware and fake virus' to dupe people on a regular basis. Seems $2k on a drone would be nothing.
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The general idea is that someone else flying it already knows where and what they're looking for. From the remote side, all that you need to do is determine who is flying a drone near something you'd like to get a better look at yourself.
Not a particularly hard thing to do when the drones are sending all that GPS and video data back to the mfg. company's hardware.
Plus the luxury of doing it from home, no need to go anywhere near what you'd like to spy on, just set up some filter rules, and maybe train a pho
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nah you're giving these guys too much credit. Someone paid the 19 hijackers to come to the USA and fly airliners into buildings. That was substantial funding as those schools are not cheap, nor is the year of lodging they had while over here on a visa. In the end those guys were expendable. So telling some dude to learn to operate a drone, and who cares if he collects data then blows himself up after. He's just as expendable as those 19 hijackers. The ones not considered expendable wont even have to get the
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This is complete FUD by an administration that has gone off the rails. I have both a DJI Spark and Mavic Air. They don't require an active internet connection for anything other than the initial activation when you first set it up.
But okay, let's play this game and assume the hobbyist pilot leaves their mobile connection up while flying. All DJI products have built-in geofencing [dji.com] which prevents you from flying anywhere near anything the Chinese might be remotely interested in spying on. They've probably
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When the data is already available, where's the loss in searching it for something you're curious in seeing? The point is that they're being provided data about all kinds of things, and while I'm sure most of it is entirely useless, but that doesn't mean it all is.
The DJI privacy policy certainly indicates that they're collecting a decent bit of information:
"Device-Related and Flight-Related Information. When you use DJI Products and Services, you may provide us with information relating to (i) your DJI Pr
Re: cant they just buy their own? (Score:2)
You have great faith in the software that controls your drone...
Geofencing is there to fence in us commoners. Surely you don't believe the hardware manufacturer, operating under orders from their national government, is similarly fenced?
Likewise, when you turn off your drone's internet connection, you're not physically disabling it. Rather you are asking the control software, please disable it. There is no reason to suppose the software will obey you when it has been given countermanding orders by the manuf
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They might buy a drone, but since they don't want to leave a trail, it's going to have to fall off of a truck.
It might be smarter to just build drones, if they're going to spend money them. You can build a camera drone for [far] less than half what DJI is charging. It won't have all the fancy features, but you don't need them anyway.
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i suck at trying to fly manual quad copters I buy off bangood for sub $100 but its something fun to give out to kids as gifts. I dont know how good they are. Not sure of a trail ... i know the FAA requires to to register your drone, but lets say you didnt. Its not like they book flightpaths. So you're flying said drone, illegally, do your thing, land it and get the hell out of dodge. I would think it would require some serious proactive work to track me down. Assuming I am looking at commercial infrastructu
I'm guessing the danger is lax security (Score:2)
Of course they can limit where drones can fly but then that makes it easy to find suspicious sites.
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that would not require hacking though. If its streamed to FB Live or to youtube then it can be reviewed without having to hack a thing :-)
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Of course they can limit where drones can fly but then that makes it easy to find suspicious sites.
That barn door has been open for awhile and the horses are long gone. DJI already has maps of where you're geofenced from flying, which means DJI already knows where all the sensitive areas are. Oh, the irony.
Prior to our current reality TV president, this wasn't a big deal.
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So why cant the would-be terrorist buy their own $2k drone to do their own surveillance rather than wait around for one to get near where they need in order to hijack it?
If you'd been paying attention to current events, you'd understand that this happened at least 4 times just in the past month.
Luckily, the US is outside the flight range of a $2k drone flown from the middle east. That's probably why they'd want to hijack one.
But in the case of China, where the threat is espionage not terrorism, they'd much rather just sell them, keep the $2k, and then siphon off all the data.
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in order to hit our infrastructure they have to be within 50 miles. So hacking a drone from 8k miles away (not even sure thats remotely possible) is as useful as tits on a bull. how is this a threat again? this just doesnt pass the smell test.
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Keep reading, Ivan. Not the part about 50 miles. Not the part about 8k miles. Not the part about your mom. Keep going. All the way to the parts about China. OK, good, now read those words!
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so your answer is China=bad????
China is bad for a lot of things, but at the same time, I'm literally living Nineteen Eighty-Four. Just because the other guy sucks does not automatically mean our guys are unimpeachable.
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You're literally a millennial because you don't comprehend literacy.
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Wrong dipshit. Born in 71. Take your libtard idiocy elsewhere . That’s why your mom should’ve never Missed with that fucking coat hanger when she was trying to abort you in her back fucking bedroom.
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Bullshit. You're not a nerd born in 1971, because you would literally comprehend the word literal.
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i tell you what... drive down i-75 ... stop off at mile marker 104 in ky. I'll meet you there and beat your ass into a pulp in person. By 1993 I had already fought in 3 wars. Ive got the campaign ribbons to prove it. So take a road trip and I'll do what your mom should have done when you were born... end your existence. I have nothing to prove to prepubescent vaginal bloodfarts like yourself.
Brought to you by Carl's Jr (Score:1)
Up next: Chinese-made clothing (Score:1)
This will go on and on until Trump is satisfied with the popular vote going his way from these apparent nationalist policies. He's so afraid of losing these elections, I'm guessing this will keep going up to the last day of presidential campaign.
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Spying (Score:1)
Are you saying that the Chinese have no interest in spying on America?
They have, but no more than the US have in spying on China.
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True - both likely already spy on each other. No worries if you're a disinterested party, but if you're on one side then it's in your interest to avoid the other side's spies.
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Chinese food is up next. The other night, my General Tso's chicken was looking at me very suspiciously at me.
And the fortune cookies seemed to be smiling sinister.
Um, but wait . . . what about all those Smart Speakers that people are fond of stuffing into their homes these days . . . ?
Should the US government issue a warning about Amazon . . . ?
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My ThinkPads are starting to become self-aware... and learning how to use kitchen knives!!
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My ThinkPads are starting to become self-aware... and learning how to use kitchen knives!!
My advice: Stop rewatching The Beaver [wikipedia.org] every week. You're going to end up as insane as Mel Gibson.
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Well yeah, notice North Korea stopped firing the large missiles in 2017? That came after they had a huge accident at their nuclear testing site, killing 200 workers. NK's weapons program imploded, which is why NK started doing the "play nice" thing. After that Trump needed a new bogeyman, and generally Americans aren't scared of Iran. They used to talk about Iranian ICBMs too, which was all hot air. Poor countries can't build ICBMs, it's fanciful, and if they try they get screwed up like North Korea did.
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... so China fit the bill. However, unlike NK and Iran, countries that don't have / can't have ICBMs by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, China does in fact have plenty of operational ICBMs. The irony is that the narrative is that China is going to get us with their nefarious consumer gadgets, unlike Iran and NK who will supposedly hit us with ICBMs.
Re: Up next: Chinese-made clothing (Score:2)
Oh noez!!! The leader of a democracy is trying to pursue public policy that benefits the people he represents. Oh the outrage!!!
'We're Not Being Paranoid' (Score:2)
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Of course they can't possibly set recommendations or requirements for the manufacturers' security processes.
That would raise prices though. Bad bad bad
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Also said by those who know what's possible, because they're already doing it to others....
In general, the U.S. government is among the most aggressive perpetrators of [insert war crimes, cyber-attacks, espionage, surveillance, nation-state destabilization, etc.] in the world.
Re: 'We're Not Being Paranoid' (Score:2)
If you liked the American century, you're going to LOVE the Chinese century.
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"Actually, yes, we are being paranoid. But that's our job."
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The thing is, it's not something it's paranoid to worry about, but this government is so paranoid (and lies so often) that I can't believe it's true just because they say so.
AFAIK there is no evidence that Huawei is less secure than devices made by other companies. And this government claiming so without offering reasonable proof isn't something that I'm even going to consider as weak evidence. They're not only paranoid, they also lie too often to trust anything they say.
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your only paranoid if they aren't out to get you.
Anyone who is not concerned about being peeped/spyed/tracked are either idiots, rampant extroverts, or have not been paying attention.
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Hmm, France...Franco-Prussian War, WW1, WW2 - all France's fault?
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Well, peoples feelings on that are clouded by Hitler / WWII, but note that in the Franco-Prussian War, the French Empire declared war on the Germans to try and prevent German reunification, and it was the French (Napoleon's) invasion of the region which caused the break up of the mostly Germanic Holy Roman Empire in the first place. Also, a big part of the rise of Hitler was because of the ridiculous Treaty of Versailles. Which sounds pretty French BTW.
France did in fact have big hand in shaping Germanic po
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The main point is that the French had been actively trying to disintegrate, prevent unity, or undermine Germany for over 100 years at the point that Hitler rose up, for the sake of wanting France to be the only major power in continental Western Europe.
DJI restrictions (Score:4, Informative)
It's kind of ironic how this argument has gone both ways. I originally really wanted a DJI Drone too but after the paranoia around users abusing drones, DJI put altitude and speed limits and even geo-fencing no-fly zones in response. Plus some firmware updates are mandatory and there's major suspicions that DJI keeps in contact with their Drones. Now apparently we're a bit worried that DJI might have a little too much data on their drones. Go figure... Personally I don't think drones should have artificial limitations in them. If you break the laws, you're responsible for it.
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There is nothing going "both ways" in what you describe. Just multiple examples of serious ongoing concerns about a company.
Most drones bought in the U.S. are manufactured (Score:2)
"Terrorism" versus "Mass Casualty Incident"? (Score:2)
I suppose it's a useful differentiation politically... but I doubt most victims care whether their killer was a foreign-influenced America-hating evildoer or just a misguided patriot exercising his first-amendment rights to own a weapon specifically designed for killing lots of people.
How far will we go with the theoreticals? (Score:2)
I mean ok... so in THEORY, someone can download the data coming back from a DJI drone and MAYBE use it in such a way so they start mapping our power grid?
I suppose the same wouldn't be possible if a similar drone was manufactured in the USA or someplace other than China though, right?
I get the idea that the latest craze is to just pile on the possible ideas for how China *could* potentially be hacking us, regardless of actual evidence it's happened. I've never doubted that their products have a fair share
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Lovely anonymous comment from some sort of pro-China troll?
Since I'm a faggot who can't read, quote for me where they've proven DJI has siphoned digital imagery from people's drones?
It's called 'projection' (Score:2)
when you accuse others of doing what you yourself are actually doing.
How are they connected? (Score:2)
This is correct (Score:2)
Literally.
I know to you they're toys, but they're not.
The American Awakening Came Too Late (Score:1)
Consider the following recent news.
1. A report [nytimes.com] by the New York Times states, "President Trump moved on Wednesday to ban American telecommunications firms from installing foreign-made equipment that could pose a threat to national security, White House officials said, stepping up a battle against China by effectively barring sales by Huawei, the country's leading networking company."
2. A report [npr.org] by NPR states, "But the Department of Homeland Security is warning that drones manufactured by Chinese companies
Some of you will never wake up. (Score:2)
Strange that.
Is there no other way? (Score:2)
Apparently there is no other way to find out this information. None whatsoever. Not the filings with the government, both state and federal, when a pipeline is to be run through communities or checked for leaks, or what wiring to mangle to stop a power utility from providing power.
I mean, that pipeline construction crew two miles from me certainly won't be able to tell me where a pipeline is located, nor