Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
AERIAL THREAT
Drones are remarkable devices. They’ve changed healthcare by delivering muchneeded medication to remote areas. In agriculture, they’re equipped with sensors to monitor crops to ultimately help farmers better understand their fields. But drones are also potentially dangerous, especially when it comes to privacy. The reality is that as with any electronic device, drones can be hacked. Once a drone has been located, a hacker can potentially take control of it, or downlink video or other images that are being broadcast.
‘Though a drone flying over your house and taking photos might be annoying, the privacy of your back garden is not always the biggest concern – drone security issues go much further than that,’ says Lehan van den Heever from Kaspersky in Africa, a global cybersecurity and antivirus provider with offices worldwide. ‘Drones can be hacked or used to hack other electronic devices. A hacker does not even need their own drone – they could hack yours in several ways to make it serve their own purposes. The sound of an out-of-control drone with a chainsaw attached to it is something nobody wants to hear…’
Kaspersky’s supercool Antidrone solution uses a neural network to detect and classify drones in automatic mode. Sensors selected specifically for each site in combination with artificial intelligence-based technology signal that a drone is approaching the controlled zone.