US Drone Program Infected by Virus

The drone system the US uses to attack its "enemies" has suffered an attack from a virus that infected its control systems in Nevada. These drones are used around the world, but especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where US troops are supposedly forbidden to enter.

They're not sure where the virus came from nor what it does. Repeated attempts to delete it have proved unsuccessful as the virus keeps coming back. This sounds a bit like the Stuxnet virus that Israel and the US put on computers at Iran's Nuclear facilities.

I suppose one possible scenario is that the Chinese or another "enemy" has done this so that they can interfere with the operations of the US drones. It might be possible for another group to take control of these drones and even use them against US forces in the field. It seems whatever technology the US comes up with, ends up being used against us sooner or later...

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

 

Maybe in the future all wars will be fought on the software level. We can only hope that countries abandon their deadly weapons and instead put all their military resources on combating viruses and other malware, as well as attacking their "enemies" with their own viruses.

So whomever has the best coders, wins! :0)

Why don't they just take this to the level of the Olympics, where instead of wars, people sit around computers writing programs to defeat other people sitting around computers. And nobody gets hurt, eh?

 

You know Iran has threatened to do something like this in response to the Stuxnet virus. They started a huge cyberwar campaign against the US recently.

And let's not forget that several drones have been recovered and sold to the Chinese, who could probably reverse engineer the software and create a virus to disable it or take it over.

My guess is the Chinese because they're also developing their own drones and most of their attacks on US computer systems thus far have been benign. They are just waiting for the right moment to unleash their wrath upon the US...