Insurgents are using inexpensive software to breach one of America’s primary tools in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, senior defense and intelligence officials were quoted in a prominent American newspaper as saying.
The militants have been utilizing over-the-counter software, like SkyGrabber, sold for as little as $25.95 on the Internet to intercept and capture live video feeds coming from U.S. Predator drones, the Wall Street Journal reported late this week. The feeds could allow America’s enemies to evade and monitor military operations.
The newspaper reports:
[T]he intercepts could give America’s enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.
The story is significant for two reasons:
- The first is that the Obama administration has come to rely largely on the drones in this two battlefronts. Hacking into their operations could greatly reduce their effectiveness. According to the Journal, drones account for 36 percent of the planes in the Air Force’s proposed 2010 budget.
- Insurgents have found yet another means to utilize cheap software to outmaneuver America’s trillion-dollar military budget. And with more software being developed and becoming available to consumers around the world, the trend will likely grow.
