PC-Virus Infects Systems inside American Drone Machines

The computer systems fitted inside the robotic airplane cockpits belonging to the Reaper and Predator drones of USA have been contaminated with a virus that's intercepting the keystrokes of the pilots while the machines, designed to accomplish certain missions, soar over Afghanistan as well as other war-zones, published wired.com dated October 7, 2011.

Nevertheless, at the time the Host-based Security Mechanism of USA's military first spotted the virus, it found that the malware didn't obstruct the Nevada-located Creech Air Force Base pilots from flying abroad over the pre-decided countries. Also, there had not occurred any confirmed instance regarding leakage or illegitimate dispatch of classified details to an external entity. However, the PC-virus is said to have overcome many attempts at eliminating it from the Creech systems, according to network-security experts. Meanwhile, the contamination emphasizes how security risks keep plaguing the US-drones, which are presently the extremely vital weapons of the country's armed forces.

A person better aware of the network-contamination states that despite removing the virus, it repeatedly returns; it could be benign, however, nothing's known for certain. Wired.com published this.

According security experts, it isn't yet clear if the PC-virus has been intentionally unleashed as also the distance it can proliferate to though it's clear that it has contaminated the unclassified and classified computers of Creech. Therefore, confidential data may've been lost to an external source.

And while Air Force personnel declined from remarking about the topic, their contention was that the attack hadn't created any panic.

Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, Spokesman of ACC (Combat Command) stated that the US military normally didn't discuss particular security flaws, malware alternatively reactions to its PC-networks, as that aided cyber-criminals seeking for attacking its computers, improve their techniques. Softpedia.com published this on October 8, 2011.

Conclusively, although the drone-infections appear as one isolated event, the weapons understandably contain flaws, while incase sensitive data gets exposed on publicly-used computers, destruction may follow. Also, incase the incident is one of any routine malware reaching the systems inadvertently, there's no reason for becoming too anxious, though it's important for the US Armed Forces to urgently fix their rules for IT security.

Related article: PC-Virus of 2005 Threatening Japanese Bank Accountholders, Warns Symantec

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