Drone Plane Converted to Airborne Hacking Platform at Black Hat

Digital death rains from above! A pair of security researchers have turned a surplus U.S. Army drone plane into an airborne hacking platform that infiltrates Wi-Fi networks, intercepts cellphone calls, and even launches denial-of-service attacks, according to media reports from the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

Building on a concept originally demonstrated in the long run year's DefCon hacker conference by Chris Paget, the WASP drone's hacking toolkit includes an IMSI catcher and antenna that can impersonate a cellphone base station. Simply flip the switch and nearby cellphones are tricked into routing outbound calls through the WASP instead of through legit, commercial cell towers.

The WASP's cell tower spoof can even be used to intercept encrypted calls, tricking cellphones into disabling encryption and at that time either redirects call or records them using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) earlier they're routed to the intended receiver, according to Wired.

The drone can as well use jamming signals to conduct DOS attacks on data providers, sniff out nearby wireless networks, and includes in its manifest "a dictionary of 340 million words for brute-forcing network passwords."

The researchers said malicious hackers could easily build their own aerial hacking platforms, however that the WASP could be used for beneficial purposes as so then, such providing emergency cellphone service in areas affected by a disaster.