Ukraine Sounds Alarm on Chinese Drones, Opening Skies to U.S. Startups
wsj.com
wsj.com
Hovering in the sky above Ukraine are hundreds of small drones from U.S. startups, searching for survivors in war-pummeled cities and Russian hide-outs in the scarred landscape.
Those startups, including Seattle-based BRINC Drones Inc. and Silicon Valley’s Skydio Inc., are rushing to fill a gap in Ukraine after government officials called out products supplied by Chinese company SZ DJI Technology Co., the world’s largest commercial drone maker, as a security risk for Ukraine’s military and civilians.
Ukrainian officials have called for limiting the use of DJI drones, saying technical glitches in the company’s products may have been intentional by DJI to sabotage the country’s defense. They have also raised concerns about Russia’s successful use of DJI equipment.
"Drone-ID sends high-accuracy GPS positions of drone, pilot, and “home point” (where the drone returns to). the packets are sent basically every second, revealing the full flight path. along with GPS, it discloses drone type and serial number."
"we didn’t require “DJI Aeroscope” for this: a cheap SDR is sufficient. our receiver is a proof-of-concept with super low range of ~5m — nothing to compare with the Aeroscope range of 20km+. but it shows that there is no encryption whatsoever."
The only way to safely use DJI drones is GPS spoofing on both ends, the phone/tablet (Mock Location App) and rewriting in flight data from external GPS module in the Drone itself (modchip).