Russians can calculate any DJI drone operator: what should I take into account the Armed Forces employees

Hackers found a way to intercept the Droneid drone identification protocol by spending a little hundred and hundred dollars. Droneid became the subject of controversy in the spring of 2022, when the Government of Ukraine criticized DJI for the fact that the Russian armed forces used DJI drones to guide their missiles and intercepted radio signals transmitted by Ukrainian DJI drones to determine the location of Ukrainian servicemen.

The whole thing is that the Chinese company has long been selling government regulatory and law enforcement agencies tracker Aeroscope size from a suitcase that allows you to receive and decode Droneid data, determining the location of any drone and its operator up to 50 km away . The Droneid and Aeroscope device were originally created to protect runways at airports, protect public measures and detect smuggling with commercial drones.

However, the Russians began to use Aeroscope to track Ukrainian drones and their operators, which carries more risks to the latter. Ukrainian officials turned to the developer company and answered there that it is strongly opposed to the use of any of their products for military purposes, both one or the other. In a comment to Verge, DJI representatives stated that Droneid drone identification protocols are securely encrypted and can only be installed using a special device - Aeroscope.

However, it turned out that cybersecurity expert Kevin Finisterre was able to identify Droneid using ETTUS software-defined radio station, which anyone can buy. German researchers also denied the DJI statement about encryption. They analyzed the firmware of one DJI model and what frequencies it keeps with the operator. After that, they managed to play the drone Droneid.

But this is not all: experts have created a tool that can calculate Droneid with Ettus and even a cheaper hackrf analogue, which costs only a few hundred dollars. With this inexpensive installation and special software, you can completely decorate the signal to find the location of the UAV operator, as does Aeroscope. Although the distance between the devices was small - a maximum of 9 m, experts say that you can expand the radius by adding special settings.

Another hacker, a graduate of Talens Conner Bender, found that the Hackrf -based system he created with a special antenna may receive Droneid data from a distance of hundreds of meters. "The opportunity to identify drone operator is now something like St. Grail in terms of guidance," says August Cole, a researcher at the Skoukroft Strategy and Security Center at the Atlantic Council. "The opportunity to do it is so easy to become something like the discovery of this war.