Researchers Create AR.Drone That Can Hack Into Wireless Networks

When the Parrot AR.Drone landed a last year, it was a toy that many of us wanted really badly. We put up our review of the AR.Drone from Parrot last December and liked the toy pretty well. I am surprised that it has taken so long for us to see hacks that use the AR.Drone for things that are potentially nefarious. Hackers have created an AR.Drone that can hack into wireless networks while flying.

The creators of the hacked flying toy dubbed it SkyNET. This SkyNET won't hunt you down and kill you though, it will just hack your wireless network. The goal of the hacked flying toy is to compromise wireless networks to infect the machines on the network with Malware and bring them online as part of the spamming scourge botnets out there.

The idea here is that the hacker could fly the AR.Drone around a neighborhood and find computers that are susceptible to the hack. By not using a computer and flying around infecting computers, it would presumably make the hacker harder to find. Of course, the downside to this is that a stiff breeze may be more than the AR.Drone can handle.

[via CNET]