The Pentagon’s research arm unveiled a new drone built with secure software that prevents the control and navigation of the aircraft from being hacked. The programme, called High Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS), employs software designed to thwart cyber attacks. “It has been underway with the Defense Advance Research Project Agency for several years after originating at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Washington,” said Kathleen Fischer, HACMS Program Manager at DARPA. “The software is designed to make sure a hacker cannot take over control of a UAS. The software is mathematically proven to be invulnerable to large classes of attack,” Fisher said.
The mini drone is engineered with mathematically assured software making it invulnerable to cyber attack. Citing the success of mock-enemy or “red-team” exercises wherein cyber experts tried to hack into the quadcopter and failed, Fisher indicated that DARPA experts have referred to the prototype quadcopter as the most secure UAS in the world.