DJI locking down its Drones

[Flyin Fun]

Saw this article thought I would share.

DJI Is Locking Down Its Drones Against a Growing Army of DIY Hackers

 

[macoman]

Interesting!

 

[DefiantChild]

Reminds me of Niantic and their Pokémon smartphone app vs reverse engineering hackers. No matter what Niantic did or how much money they threw at the problem they were unable to outmaneuver the hackers.

Moral of the story? DJI should focus on building the best quality app that they can and not waste time or profit worrying about hackers.

 

[macoman]

Reminds me of Niantic and their Pokémon smartphone app vs reverse engineering hackers. No matter what Niantic did or how much money they threw at the problem they were unable to outmaneuver the hackers.

Moral of the story? DJI should focus on building the best quality app that they can and not waste time or profit worrying about hackers.

DJI should worry because if these drones cause accidents that end up in dead or major disaster... Is not the hackers that authorities will look at it, it's DJI that is going to be guilty.

 

[WV. Rootman]

Unlocking your drone is unsafe says DJI. They may cause fly away. DJI 's upgrades are safe? No fly aways. Lol DJI says lot of upgrades coming without notice to fight unsafe drones. I say lot of fly aways coming. It's going to get bad.

 

[The Springs]

I suppose it is inevitable that people will do this(hacking) but it will only make DJI force more changes to FW and keep us in the dark about what is hidden within these new FWs.
I think the 500m height limit is more than reasonable and NFZs although not perfect will probably be refined/improved over time .
Trusting people to" do the right thing" regarding flying safely is a naive approach in my opinion .

 

[jeffames226]

DJI should worry because if these drones cause accidents that end up in dead or major disaster... Is not the hackers that authorities will look at it, it's DJI that is going to be guilty.

Really? Could you cite any examples of major disasters or deaths from the DJI drones? I would be very interested in reading them.

 

[macoman]

Really? Could you cite any examples of major disasters or deaths from the DJI drones? I would be very interested in reading them.

Well I am not saying that had happened but I am just saying that if these drone's firmware get hacked and caused a major injury to someone, falling from the sky. It's not the hackers that authorities will be checking on, it's DJI.

 

[Meta4]

DJI 's upgrades are safe? No fly aways. Lol DJI says lot of upgrades coming without notice to fight unsafe drones. I say lot of fly aways coming. It's going to get bad.

Perhaps you can point me to a few flyways you think were caused by DJI updates?

 

[jeffames226]

Perhaps you can point me to a few flyways you think were caused by DJI updates?

SERIOUSLY???? This forum is full of them unless you are calling your forum members liars.

 

[DefiantChild]

DJI should worry because if these drones cause accidents that end up in dead or major disaster... Is not the hackers that authorities will look at it, it's DJI that is going to be guilty.

Respectfully, your assumption is somewhat naive. Were DJI to code firmware in such a manner that "cause accidents that end up in dead or major disaster..." and the egregiousness of that code could not be proven because it was (a) encrypted, and/or (b) otherwise obfuscated; then you'd be screaming for someone to reverse the code to prove a basis on which to hold them liable. Good luck with that. Even if DJI were to give up their source code and issues were discovered; correlating those issues to an actual event and proving that event was entirely out of an operators direct control would be Herculean at best. Good luck with that.

This does, however, lead to an argument supporting open source and collaborative community involvement and development to identify and rectify flaws and bugs before any code is widely and publicly distributed.

The real reason DJI wants to "lock down" their code is because doing so gives them a distinct competitive advantage that forces competition to spend time, money, and resources to duplicate. Without going into detail, DJI's product was hacked and its software guts circulated for anyone interested to see. That threatens DJI's perceived sovereignty, so they posture.

The concept that "drones cause accidents" is as empty an argument as the whole gun control debate. Inanimate objects don't cause accidents, but people do. I get tired of those who refuse to accept responsibility for their actions, and instead, absolve themselves by pushing the blame onto others or objects that can't defend themselves.

You're entitled to your opinion and I respect your right to express it. I simply disagree for the aforementioned reasons.

 

[Meta4]

SERIOUSLY???? This forum is full of them unless you are calling your forum members liars.

Yes, seriously ... point me to a few of these incidents.
It's very easy to say flyaway but backing that up with flight data is a different matter and the actual cause of the incident is often found to be something different from what the user thought it was.
I read a lot of threads here and haven't encountered any flyaways that could be attributed to firmware updates myself so I'd be interested to see some.