Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but I found it interesting. I found this in a Russian forum.
On Friday, the DJI leadership received a complaint from the US Army. The US Army stops using DJI drones due to problems with cybersecurity. Army units were ordered to remove batteries and storage devices and remove the DJI software. The company DJI noted with concern that it was looking forward to talking with the army leaders to learn more about their problems. Other US government agencies have taken similar actions, and both the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior have quietly removed the DJI drones from their aviation divisions last year.
The decision of the army was made after US Air Force General Mike Holmes, who led the command of the air command, led two incidents involving small drones that invaded the airspace on the basis of ACC in early July.
During a press conference at the Pentagon, navy captain Jeff Davis announced that the Ministry of Defense now allows the US military to shoot down any UAVs that are considered a threat. Given that DJI products account for about 70 percent of all household unmanned aerial vehicles in the world, the shooting license appears to be a sinister news for the Chinese company.
At the same time, there are more questions about what information and how DJI collects from users drones. On Monday, a technology websiteVerge wrote about the study of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the cyber threat created by DJI S-1000. This is not a children's drone - it's a complicated heavy aircraft, usually flying professionals. According to Werge , the NOAA study showed that the S-1000 "does not pose a threat to data leakage."
The S-1000 usually flies using two controllers, each of which requires its own operator. One controller controls the flight, and the other controls (very expensive) the camera. The NOAA study focused on these controllers, which are usually purchased separately from third-party suppliers and found nothing wrong or unusual in the way they processed the data. Nevertheless, Vergereported that Ed Dumas, one of the authors of NOAA's S-1000 study, tested his own DJI Phantom 3 and "found that the unit sends encrypted data back to DJI and servers whose location it could not identify. "
For some drones experts this information was obsolete news. Kevin Finisterre, senior security engineer at Division 13, specializing in the fight against unmanned technology, says he and his encoding colleagues across the country are trying to understand exactly what information the DJI collects. DJI has every chance to create a wonderful, capable drone, but also to frequently update its software and firmware, changes that sometimes create more problems than they solve.
Recent changes in the DJI GO application that allow owners to manage their unmanned aircraft using a smartphone or tablet have added some of the software known as Tinker. Finisterre says that theoretically adding Tinker to the DJI application can allow DJI developers [software] to covertly upload any changes they wanted to the DJI application. Finisterre and his colleagues suspect that Tinker was one of the factors that prompted the army and other government agencies to retreat from the DJI.
Based on his conversations with DJI this week, Finisterre says the company plans to remove Tinker from future software releases. It's too early to say whether this will only lead the Chinese manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles out of public view and return to the favor of the US government. But, it seems, full confidence that once the military starts shooting droning unmanned aerial vehicles, DJI will again be in the spotlight.
On Friday, the DJI leadership received a complaint from the US Army. The US Army stops using DJI drones due to problems with cybersecurity. Army units were ordered to remove batteries and storage devices and remove the DJI software. The company DJI noted with concern that it was looking forward to talking with the army leaders to learn more about their problems. Other US government agencies have taken similar actions, and both the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior have quietly removed the DJI drones from their aviation divisions last year.
The decision of the army was made after US Air Force General Mike Holmes, who led the command of the air command, led two incidents involving small drones that invaded the airspace on the basis of ACC in early July.
During a press conference at the Pentagon, navy captain Jeff Davis announced that the Ministry of Defense now allows the US military to shoot down any UAVs that are considered a threat. Given that DJI products account for about 70 percent of all household unmanned aerial vehicles in the world, the shooting license appears to be a sinister news for the Chinese company.
At the same time, there are more questions about what information and how DJI collects from users drones. On Monday, a technology websiteVerge wrote about the study of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the cyber threat created by DJI S-1000. This is not a children's drone - it's a complicated heavy aircraft, usually flying professionals. According to Werge , the NOAA study showed that the S-1000 "does not pose a threat to data leakage."
The S-1000 usually flies using two controllers, each of which requires its own operator. One controller controls the flight, and the other controls (very expensive) the camera. The NOAA study focused on these controllers, which are usually purchased separately from third-party suppliers and found nothing wrong or unusual in the way they processed the data. Nevertheless, Vergereported that Ed Dumas, one of the authors of NOAA's S-1000 study, tested his own DJI Phantom 3 and "found that the unit sends encrypted data back to DJI and servers whose location it could not identify. "
For some drones experts this information was obsolete news. Kevin Finisterre, senior security engineer at Division 13, specializing in the fight against unmanned technology, says he and his encoding colleagues across the country are trying to understand exactly what information the DJI collects. DJI has every chance to create a wonderful, capable drone, but also to frequently update its software and firmware, changes that sometimes create more problems than they solve.
Recent changes in the DJI GO application that allow owners to manage their unmanned aircraft using a smartphone or tablet have added some of the software known as Tinker. Finisterre says that theoretically adding Tinker to the DJI application can allow DJI developers [software] to covertly upload any changes they wanted to the DJI application. Finisterre and his colleagues suspect that Tinker was one of the factors that prompted the army and other government agencies to retreat from the DJI.
Based on his conversations with DJI this week, Finisterre says the company plans to remove Tinker from future software releases. It's too early to say whether this will only lead the Chinese manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles out of public view and return to the favor of the US government. But, it seems, full confidence that once the military starts shooting droning unmanned aerial vehicles, DJI will again be in the spotlight.
