A computer virus has hit the U.S. military fleet of unmanned drones with the virus so far unremovable, according to Wired. The U.S. fleet of Predators and Reapers are affected and the virus is recording pilot keystrokes (along with spreading its love, as viruses do) while the drones fly across countries in the Middle East.
The question begs is why the military with unlimited black funds cannot find and eradicate this potential disaster from malware, especially with the incidents of drones in 2009 involving Iraq insurgents? In the summer of 2009 during the Iraq conflict, insurgents were found to have ‘days and days’ of recorded videos of drones flying over Iraq after laptops were captured by American forces. The laptops had software that could be purchased for $29 where one could record video from U.S. military drones flying missions over Iraq. (Note to self; is this live video that the laptops would display with the military-breached software or recorded from previous events?)
Most of America’s drones are reportedly flown from Nevada in an area known as Creech; there the majority of “Ground Crontrol Stations” or GCS’s are in service guiding drones from wherever worldwide they have drones in operation. The drone section of the military seems to be particularly vulnerable when they were allowed to continue the use of USBs to transfer and upload data when the rest of the military had strict orders to halt the use of USB devices.
The teams running the drones were advised by Kaspersky and the drone teams then proceeded to wipe the drives that they knew in advance would be a time-staking, daunting task but nontheless had to be completed (in order to determine if further damage had been done).
Users experiencing bizarre computer behavior are urged to contact PC Virus Doctors’ Computer Repair Dallas where we can provide reference to top security professionals to determine what may be causing erratic computer responses or where security alarms sound without probable cause.