If you saw a toy quadricopter flying outside your office would you be alarmed?
Researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, believe they have dreamt up a way for malicious hackers to break into WiFi networks and commandeer computers into a botnet – not via the internet, but using a DIY drone helicopter that costs less than $600.
With one mischievous eye towards the “Terminator” movies, Theodore Reed, Joseph Geis and Sven Dietrich have dubbed their creation “SkyNET” and say that for a few hundred dollars an off-the-shelf remote-controlled quadricopter can be turned into a stealth device which can seek out poorly protected WiFi networks, and then infect computers attached to them.
Because botmasters use the internet to deliver commands to their networks of compromised computers (which can in turn provide clues on if a botnet is active, and how to defend against it), the researchers were curious as to whether there were other ways to both create a botnet and…
Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.
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