"This Hacker Tool Can Pinpoint a DJI Drone Operator's Exact Location"

Consumer drones have become potential war tools since they can perform high-altitude surveillance, conduct reconnaissance, and even launch weapons, all while their operator is safely hidden as far as miles away. However, hackers have found that for quadcopters sold by the world's biggest drone manufacturer, operators are not as hidden as they may believe. These flying machines continuously broadcast their pilots' locations from the sky, and anyone with inexpensive radio hardware and a new software tool could intercept and decode these broadcasts to get their coordinates. At the recent Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) in San Diego, researchers from Ruhr University Bochum and the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security demonstrated the ability to reverse engineer the radio signals of DJI drones to decode their DroneID radio protocol. The deconstruction of this signal allowed the researchers to determine that every DJI drone's DroneID communications send not only its own GPS location and a unique ID for that drone, but also its operator's GPS coordinates. This DroneID system was created to enable governments, regulators, and law enforcement to monitor and prevent the misuse of drones. Hackers and security researchers have warned that DroneID is unencrypted and accessible to anybody who can receive its radio signals. Researchers have demonstrated how that signal can be decoded and read, allowing any hacker who can eavesdrop on DroneID to identify a drone's hidden operator, even if that drone pilot is significantly far away. This article continues to discuss the potential impact of hackers reverse engineering the radio signals of drones sold by DJI to decode the radio protocol they use. 

Wired reports "This Hacker Tool Can Pinpoint a DJI Drone Operator's Exact Location"