Military Drones Infected With Computer Virus

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Wired.com says a fleet of military drones on a base in Nevada have been infected with a virus that tracks a pilot's button pushes, but the Air Force has denied such a rumor.

According to Wired.com, the virus was noticed a couple weeks ago, and it is a keylogger that pays attention to every keystroke by the pilots in the control room on the base as they remotely fly Predator and Reaper drones on missions over Afghanistan and other battle zones.

They don't know if the information is being sent to an outside source, but all attempts to get rid of the virus has failed. The presence of the virus, whether by attack by a foreign enemy, or simply an unintentional happening, clearly reveals a weakness in defense systems security. These are supposed to be secure military systems.

"The planes were never in any jeopardy of 'going stupid'," a source said, and the virus "is not affecting operations in any way ... it showed up on a Microsoft-based Windows system. We have a closed-loop system and heavily protected cockpits -- the planes were never in jeopardy."

Hmmmm, maybe the military should invest in MACs by Apple.

The source also revealed that "The virus was introduced when the Air Force was transferring data maps between systems using external hard drives. Very quickly the Air Force protective network tracked the virus."

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

U.S. Military Drones Infected With Mysterious Computer Virus - Fox News