Amazon's non-existent drone delivery army ALREADY P0WNED

Weak ownership of the radio control in the world's most popular quadcopter means it's trivial to take ownership of any device within range, according to a neat bit of tinkering that points up yet another problem Amazon would have to solve if its “drone delivery” were ever tofly. And how hard is it? Let's quote directly from …

[Anonymous Coward]

oh joy

He should get together with someone at one of the TV stations that have them and see what he can demonstrate for their cameras. Or better yet, someone at a local police station (with the same news crew in tow) and see just how fast the FAA revokes all of the permits...

[Winkypop]

Hello, this is Amazon?

Yes, I see....

Your parcel has not arrived yet, hmm

Let me check.....tap tap tap

Says here it landed at 62 West Wallaby Street, Wigan

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon's drones are autonomous

So no takeover attack is possible since they aren't radio controlled.

OK, obviously there has to be some way for it to communicate with home base, at least in emergencies ("help, I've been shot, going down at the following coordinates") but the problem of encrypting/securing communication is well solved, if not solved well.

Of all the issues to worry about with this plan, 'Amazon drones in 2020 will be vulnerable to a takeover attack that works on hobbyist equipment in 2013' isn't one.

[Richard Jones 1]

It was a news story claiming they were working on something for the future, 6 to 8 years or more away. I find it unlikely that a single air drop parcel per customer is ever going to be the norm. I do feel that the story may well be a cover for something else rather more practical. Standardised packages with enhanced automatic navigation and tracking strike me as highly desirable as does the issue of improving delivery to those who are effectively 'off grid' at the moment. Finding the limitations and threats as well as soliciting suggestions and improvements could be no more than an effort for crowd sourced research.

[You have not yet created a handle]

Or just a very clever, well timed piece of free publicity by Amazon.

Just how many column inches and hours of TV coverage have Amazon received form this pie in the sky idea?! Head of marketing is no doubt going to have a lot to celebrate with this Christmas.

Paris because we all know she love as many column inches that she can get, and if it was to be accidentally broadcasted around the world to improve her popularity then all the better.

[Shagbag]

Amazon Skeet

In a country where everyone has the right to bear arms, I can imagine that Amazon will lose a few of these drones every year.

[Elmer Phud]

Re: Amazon Skeet

"In a country where everyone has the right to bear arms, I can imagine that Amazon will lose a few of these drones every year."

I think that was covered yesterday -- apparently not a chance due to ordnance choices and availability.

[hplasm]

Re: Amazon Skeet

Isn't this a far more elegant solution than blasting away uselessly away at the sky like a drunken redneck?

[DJ 2]

I have this vision

of Amazon fixed wing drones, flying low over a city then carpet bombing a 100+ parrot type drones carrying packages. Each one zipping off in a different direction delivering it's package then they rendezvous with an Amazon truck to be taken back to the airfield / depot.

All the while blasting Ride of the Valkyries out at full blast.

"I love the smell of new books in the morning"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I have this vision

Wait till you get to the vision of an Army full of Amazon drones carrying a dome to drop over your neighbourhood... like in the Simpsons Movie... with a drone sized hole in the very top so they can deliver "all your shopping needs" into the dome.

[Swarthy]

Re: I have this vision

Picturing that supplied image, I got "Flight of the Bumblebee" rather than Wagner.

[Alan Brown]

reroute quadcoptores over the local skeet range

and

"Pull"

[Anonymous C0ward]

Can the Parrot's wireless network

be set to use WPA2 with a strong password?

[DropBear]

Meh...

This has about as much relevance to anything at all as a bloke walking up to the next café with an open WiFi hotspot, whipping out his phone and boasting "Look! Me can haxx0r teh interwebs out of thin air!!!" Next up: "I can easily pwn any unlocked door!!!"

[Mark Solaris]

It's all bogus...

...it could never happen.

In other news, how much should I list these eight Predators I "found" for on eBay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lazy reporting - this has absolutely nothing to do with Amazon

This has absolutely nothing to do with Amazon because they haven't even remotely suggested that they will use Parrot AR drones. Are you suggesting that LOHAN has already been hacked by this too? No. Utter drivel.

How about you stop scaremongering and do your job?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the drone does not accept sudo commands.

You've misunderstood the source code. The sudo command is running locally on the hacker's box in order to launch the aireplay-ng command to send some packets to the drone that will cause it to deauthenticate the MAC address of the legitimate drone controller PC.

[Mpeler]

With a drone, you're never alone

Amazon, and then you're gone.....