DEF CON 23 - Robinson and Mitchell - Knocking my neighbors kids cruddy drone offline

Michael Robinson and Mitchell discuss their research into forcing commercial drones to land by sending low-level GPS signals without illegal jamming.

My neighbor’s kid is constantly flying his quad copter outside my windows. I see the copter has a camera and I know the little sexed crazed monster has been snooping around the neighborhood. With all of the hype around geo-fencing and drones, this got me to wondering: Would it be possible to force a commercial quad copter to land by sending a low-level pulse directly to it along the frequencies used by GPS? Of course, radio signal jamming is illegal in the U.S and, frankly, it would disrupt my electronics, too. In this presentation, we’ll look at some of the research and issues we encountered, when we attempted to force land two commercial drones (the new DJI Phantom 3 and the Parrot Bepop Drone) by sending GPS signals directly at the drones (while staying under the threshold for jamming and not disrupting anyone else). Speaker Bio: Michael Robinson has over 15 years of computer security experience and is currently a computer and mobile device forensic examiner in the Washington, DC area, where he deals with intrusion analysis, incident response, and criminal cases. For over four years he ran IT and IA operations for a Department of Defense agency. He has conducted research on security of mobile devices and is starting to play around in the drone space. He teaches computer forensics at the graduate level at Stevenson University in Maryland.