Security researchers reverse-engineered Wi-Fi-enabled sniper rifles and found they can be hacked to alter aim from about 100 feet away. The conversation explores how criminals could exploit these vulnerabilities in connected weapons.
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Well, we got Robert Siciliano on this type of development and all this other hacking and all, but this has taken up one other level here. He's following these Wi-Fi sniper rifles, and these are the things that are at the risk of being hacked, and that just ups it significantly. What's going on here?
So it seems that a couple of security researchers had purchased a couple of rifles that function via Wi-Fi, meaning that they have computers in them and they can be programmed, and these hackers are, you know, white hat Hacker has reverse-engineered the technology, essentially making the device vulnerable. And so now they have this device that can shoot in a different angle at this point. And who knows, you know, what a criminal hacker could do with that.
All right, now what does this do then? All of a sudden you have— you're in control of a weapon essentially, right?
And then what they're saying is if a hacker, a bad guy, gets within 100 feet of this device, that they can and control it so it shoots not exactly where the sniper, let's say, or the rifleman chooses to aim.
You lost me there. So what control does it give you, that someone now going after you, you can make go after someone else?
Potentially. So let's just say you have, you know, an entire platoon deploying these particular rifles, and they're all aiming at a particular target. Well, if they're hacked, then the target is— you know, it goes a different direction. So basically what they've done was they've made like a, like a, what, like a 1-ounce bullet determine that it's like a 70, 72-pound bullet. Think about that for a second. So it changes the direction of everything.
All right, thank you, Robert, I think. But holy cow, that is scary stuff. Robert Siciliano. All right.
