{"id":4602,"date":"2017-07-13T22:39:09","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T14:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/?p=4602"},"modified":"2017-07-13T22:39:34","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T14:39:34","slug":"dji-firmware-hacking-removes-drone-flight-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/2017\/07\/dji-firmware-hacking-removes-drone-flight-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"DJI Firmware Hacking Removes Drone Flight Restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Drones have been taking over the world, everyone with a passing interest in making videos has one and DJI firmware hacking gives you the ability to remove all restrictions (no-fly zones, height and distance) which under most jurisdictions is illegal (mostly EU and FAA for the US).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/DJI-Firmware-Hacking-Removes-Drone-Flight-Restrictions-640x360.jpg\" alt=\"DJI Firmware Hacking Removes Drone Flight Restrictions\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-4603\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/DJI-Firmware-Hacking-Removes-Drone-Flight-Restrictions-640x360.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/DJI-Firmware-Hacking-Removes-Drone-Flight-Restrictions-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/DJI-Firmware-Hacking-Removes-Drone-Flight-Restrictions.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an interesting subject, and also a controversial one as people are worried that it could cause a drone to collide with a passenger plane (although in all honestly, I&#8217;m not sure how much damage a 1kg drone would do &#8211; some geese are much heavier).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Drone hackers in the UK are busy at work exploiting the application security shortcomings of a major manufacturer to circumvent restrictions, including flight elevation limits. DJI says it has pushed out a firmware update to nip the problem in the bud, but one expert The Register spoke to maintains that hacking is still possible.<\/p>\n<p>The potential for drone hacking can be traced back to a mistake made by DJI in leaving development debug code in its Assistant 2 application. Changes could be made by commenting out one line in a file and setting the debug flag from false to true. The shortcoming exposed a full range of parameters that enabled hackers to turn off safeguards.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s looks like \u202a#DJI\u202c&#8217;s \u202a#Spark\u202c was jailbroken due to poor app security? Leaving dev code &#038; passwords in the app was probably not a good idea,&#8221; UAVHive, a UK-based drone enthusiast community, said in a Twitter update.<\/p>\n<p>Other DJI products \u2013 including the Phantom and Inspire 2 \u2013 have had the same jailbreak proven.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3033787195489589\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Darknet Responsive Post Ad Links [previously link ad unit] -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3033787195489589\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"5456620019\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<p>It seems DJI have left debugging code in the production app which enables hackers to change parameters via the DJI Assistant 2 application.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also an act of hackers against DJI for limiting the behaviour of their drones, with many complaints of false positives on no-fly zones and the height restrictions being overly cautious.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>DJI has been warned repeatedly since at least April, if not before, by Kevin Finisterre, a drone security expert, among others. Despite this, critics say DJI failed to act.<\/p>\n<p>Concerns centre on the application security risks posed by the presence of DJI debug code in publicly released applications, something that creates a backdoor for hackers to meddle with the technology.<\/p>\n<p>Recently numerous underground groups of drone users have sprung up and are collaborating on removing restrictions from their drones and even change performance parameters. For example, a Facebook group for drone enthusiasts included hackers in its ranks. A Slack group is even more active and seems to be where a lot of the actual effort is taking place, we&#8217;re told.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The main focus of efforts is removing height restrictions with ongoing efforts to remove no-fly zones, there&#8217;s even secret groups of drone pilots now having height competitions to see who can push their drone&#8217;s performance the furthest,&#8221; a source told El Reg. &#8220;A lot of this extreme behaviour by DJI owners is a direct backlash at DJI for adding a range of restrictions including having to connect to their servers via the internet. Recently, for example, DJI&#8217;s infrastructure was down and users complained they were grounded as a result. The no-fly zone database has many false positives.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With drones getting cheaper and more accessible (Like the DJI Spark), this is bound to happen more and more and I think there is a certain responsibility that lays with drone manufacturers to ensure their drones are safe from tampering.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Yay or nay? Are the restrictions necessary, or can people generally make responsible decisions by themselves?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2017\/07\/11\/dji_drones_app_sec\/\">The Register<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Drones have been taking over the world, everyone with a passing interest in making videos has one and DJI firmware hacking gives you the ability to remove all restrictions (no-fly zones, height and distance) which under most jurisdictions is illegal (mostly EU and FAA for the US). It&#8217;s an interesting subject, and also a controversial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Drones have been taking over the world, everyone with a passing interest in making videos has one and DJI firmware hacking allows removal of restrictions.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,22,23],"tags":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Darknet","author_link":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/author\/darknet\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4602"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}