Security Researchers At Black Hat Conference Show Off Aerial Drone That Can Fool Mobile Phones And More

Each year a bunch of hackers and security researchers descend on the Black Hat conference to show off the things they create for hacking. Some of the tech is used for good and a lot of the tech can be used for bad as well. The WASP drone is one of the things that could be used for either I suspect. WASP stands for Wireless Aerial Surveillance platform and is constructed using a surplus USAF drone.

The drone would fly around sniffing out WiFi networks and has hardware inside that allows it to spoof a cell phone tower. When the cell phone spoofing part is on it fools mobiles in the area into connecting to wireless networks through the drone rather than nearby towers. When the calls come through the tech inside the drone can capture the calls.

The WASP also has a network-sniffing tool and a dictionary of 340 million words for brute force attacks on passwords to gain access to networks. The GSM hack cell phone hack is inspired by work shown off at the DefCon conference last year by Chris Paget. The GSM cell phone capturing aspect of the drone even works for encrypted calls. The aircraft is controlled by remote and can fly on its own if you set GPS waypoints.

[via Wired]