Military 'Not Quite Sure' How Drone Cockpits Got Infected

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/military-not-quite-sure-how-drone-cockpits-got-infected/

By Noah Shachtman
Danger Room
Wired.com
October 19, 2011

It’s been more than a month since a virus infected the remote “cockpits” 
of America’s drone fleet. And the U.S. military still doesn’t know 
exactly how the machines at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada got 
infected.

“We’re not quite sure how that happened yet,” General Robert Kehler told 
reporters Tuesday. Kehler is the head of U.S. Strategic Command, which 
is nominally in charge of the military’s Cyber Command and all other 
online activities.

“It was a virus that we believe at this point entered from the wild, if 
you will, not specifically targeted at the RPA (remotely piloted 
aircraft) activities but entered through some other process,” he added.

The Pentagon is ordinarily reluctant to talk about any computer security 
breaches; even routine infections are treated as military secrets. For 
example, the clean-up of a common, if widespread, worm was considered a 
classified mission — undertaken under the name “Operation Buckshot 
Yankee.” When Kehler’s predecessor mentioned the phrase at a conference 
in May of 2010, several people in the room gasped at the seeming 
indiscretion.

But the drone cockpit virus has already received so much publicity that 
the military decided to speak up, just a little. Last Wednesday, the Air 
Force issued a press release calling the infection “more of a nuisance 
than an operational threat.” An anonymous defense official told the 
Associated Press that the malware “is routinely used to steal log-in and 
password data from people who gamble or play games like Mafia Wars 
online.”

[...]

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