Modified U.S. Army drone spies on WiFi users

Several news outlets, including this report from CNET, told the story this week about the security engineers who showed off an unmanned aerial vehicle that can spy on WiFi users. The demonstration took place at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

The engineers, Mike Tassey and Rich Perkins, did not conduct a live demonstration of the drone's capabilities. But they did bring it out on stage and told some frightening stories about what they had been able to accomplish by adding their own touches to it. Among those "touches" are "a payload of wireless sniffers and network-cracking tools," CNET's Declan McCullagh reported. McCullagh also quoted Perkins as saying, "We can identify a target by his cell phone and follow him home to where enterprise security doesn't reach. We can reverse engineer someone's life."

Perkins and Tassey call the drone WASP - Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform. A test flight has been posted on YouTube.