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Gatwick drones: Two arrested over flight disruption
- dgellow 8y agoSeems to be a very cheap (and relatively safe) way to cause a lot of financial damage. I wonder if we will see more of such events coming from activist or foreign agents trying to destabilize a system.
- alexchamberlain 8y agoThe biggest reaction of friends and colleagues seems to be one of surprise that drones can cause such disruption for so long. It is a little concerning - what if the operators had had more malicious intent?
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoFriends and colleagues are right to be surprised. If the official story is true two people with a couple of drones outclassed the entire British security establishment for a couple of days. It's not that drones hadn't been considered a threat, or that there weren't similar events in the past. Threat assessment studies were done because similar events did happen in the past - although not on this scale. But there seems to have been absolutely no contingency planning, and no clear demarcation of responsibility between the police, the military, the civil aviation authority, and the rest of the government. The reality is that a lot of infrastructure of all kinds is ridiculously exposed and vulnerable. But the government hands out corporate welfare to trophy projects like a pointless aircraft carrier while making almost no preparations for even the most obvious and predictable technological threats.
- jimnotgym 8y agoCould it be that with security services under such financial pressure they decided to ignore the drone threat? Now the government will probably give police extra cash just to combat drones. 1-nil to the police administrators.
- GordonS 8y agoCall me cynical, but I had thought exactly the same thing.
- IshKebab 8y agoMore malicious than shutting down a major airport? The only example I can think of is bombing a crowd but fortunately nobody has tried that yet.
- ehsankia 8y agoCheap? Just wait until they make an example out of those two. It definitely won't be a cheap event for them.
- joering2 8y agoRight before Christmas... oh boy. I bet the terrorism charges will be thrown at those two. Anyone can come up with similar case from the recent past ?
- tushar-r 8y agoLaw was passed sometime ago - it's up to five years in prison: https://www.techradar.com/news/new-uk-drone-laws-come-into-force-with-a-maximum-penalty-of-five-years-in-prison https://www.techradar.com/news/new-uk-drone-laws-come-into-f...
- blackstrips 8y agoJust 5 years? I suppose it’s good from a rehabilitation perspective but it’s kind of weak as a deterrent - where 10 years might be more appropriate.
- dingaling 8y agoWhy even five years? Let the airport,airlines and insurera sue any culprits for losses. Why should I pay for their incarceration? No harm was done to persons or property.
- leetcrew 8y agoin an ideal world, all non-physical harm would be handled this way. unfortunately, such attackers can cause multi-million dollar (or pound, in this case) losses in a short period of time and probably have minimal assets. you might get a few grand out of them if you're lucky.
- bredren 8y agoIt reminds me some of driving trucks into crowds to terrorize. Not sophisticated or expensive but effective.
- superkuh 8y agoOnly effective because of overreaction.
- sandworm101 8y agoI think this was very sophisticated. They planned. They hid. They monitored media and adapted plans. They minimized thier efforts to obtain a result. This was leagues ahead of any recent terror attack. It would be no shock to learn that they had some military, officer, training.
- cm2187 8y agoThat's what the French authorities are pretending to make it look like a foreign aggression and not home grown terrorism. But the planning required for an operation like that is pretty trivial.
- dazc 8y agoIt occured to me, that once the military became involved, the perpetrator would have the sense to cease his/her activities. The fact this didn't happen leaves me to believe they were not so clever after all?
- randomsearch 8y agoThey expected and were ready to be caught.
- raverbashing 8y ago.
- dang 8y ago
- bicubic 8y agoThere's an infinite number of ways to asymmetrically attack a system. A single person in Australia caused millions of dollars of damage by just sticking needles into strawberries in supermarkets. People have rented and driven light vehicles into crowds. People have deliberately poisoned food at restaurants. The attack surface is limited only by the imagination, while defending against each scenario carries immense financial and personal freedom cost. The whole point of asymmetric attacks is that they use the size of the target against it. It's impossible to stop these kinds of attacks without completely taking away personal freedoms and instituting some kind of pre-crime surveillance state. And a pre-crime surveillance state is exactly what most governments seem to want to build today. The historical scales are rapidly tipping towards tyranny in the name of illusionary safety. As Franklin aptly put it, "They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". As far as drones go, it's comparatively simple to build what's effectively a supersonic missile for about 10K usd worth of easily obtainable hobbyist parts. It's been possible for the better part of the decade. The fact that no one has done it suggests that maybe there aren't that many bad actors out there after all.
- cm2187 8y agoPlus terrorism isn't a numbers game, it's about shocking people. Torture a single victim live on youtube and you will get more coverage than a 20 victims rampage. The 24h news cycle "everything is breaking news", "this incredibly rare thing could happen to you" is incredibly helpful to terrorists.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ffwacom 8y agoThis, our systems that power the modern world are incredibly fragile.
- orbital-decay 8y ago> It's impossible to stop these kinds of attacks without completely taking away personal freedoms and instituting some kind of pre-crime surveillance state. It's likely impossible in that kind of state as well.
- Scarblac 8y agoI remember one of those huge DDOS attacks a few years ago, where the online speculation of who the perpetrator was centered mostly on Russia, the Mossad, or a guy with a botnet on 4Chan who claimed it was him. Since then we're living in the future, as far as I'm concerned.
- rasz 8y agoAre you thinking of the one that turned out to be some idiots running minecraft server renting business? https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam-brought-down-the-internet/ https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam-brou...
- __jf__ 8y agoThe Future of Violence [0] explores this further. Its TLDR is something like: technology enables distributed offensive capabilities leading to many-to-many threats. Technology also creates distributed vulnerabilities by increasing attack surface. Finally, technology also enables distributed defensive capabilities. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Future-Violence-Robots-Hackers-Confronting-ebook/dp/B01E4DC6B4 https://www.amazon.com/Future-Violence-Robots-Hackers-Confro...
- m0zg 8y agoCan't help but wonder, what was the goal? What were they hoping to achieve with it, and how did they expect to get away?
- ToFab123 8y agoMaybe somebody was fired and got pissed off. Similar to a sysadm that changes all passwords on his way out of the door
- samwillis 8y agoRumour is that they were emviromental activists.
- ggm 8y agoThe key word being rumour.
- anigbrowl 8y agoPentesting.
- dsl 8y agoAccording to The Telegraph, government officials suspect an "eco terrorist." No additional details were provided.
- djhworld 8y agoI wouldn't much too much trust in what the telegraph says
- yardstick 8y agoI’m skeptical it’s a group because no one has claimed responsibility- what’s the point causing all this chaos if you won’t at least do an anonymous post claiming it’s due to <xyz> issues. My money is on disgruntled locals (individuals, not group) fed up with the noise, or an individual that feels hard done by / aggrieved by either the airport or an airline.
- sytelus 8y agoInteresting bits... One piece of equipment believed to have been deployed at the airport is the Israeli-developed Drone Dome system, which can detect drones using radar. It can also jam communications between the drone and its operator, enabling authorities to take control of and land the drone. In a move known as "buzzing the tower", it emerged the perpetrator had taunted airport staff by circling the drone around the building and flashing its lights A detailed description of the drone, provided by witnesses, meant experts were able to determine the make and model of the machine, which is only available from a handful of locations in the UK. Police and military experts were deployed to search for the operators of the drones, which reappeared near the airport every time the authorities tried to reopen the runways. TLDR; There are no sure fire way to track down offender and police mainly relied on informants and traditional detective work of identifying drone and who might have purchased it. Better coverage is here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/22/gatwick-airport-drone-chaos-man-woman-arrested-passengers-brace/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/22/gatwick-airport-... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/22/gatwick-drone-arrests-two-people-held-over-disruption-of-airport https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/22/gatwick-dron...
- raverbashing 8y agoYou can probably triangulate the controller if you know which radio frequency it uses
- WalterBright 8y agoShouldn't it be fairly easy to thoroughly jam it, and then the drone does whatever the default is when it loses all radio and GPS data?
- Doctor_Fegg 8y agoThere are drones with 4G comms. Shutting off the entire local phone network may be less acceptable.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
- rurban 8y agoReminds me on the current Icelandic movie "Woman at war", out now in the cinemas. Maybe it's related.
- seddin 8y agoWas this the guy that posted the image on Reddit ?
- wishinghand 8y agoI’m pretty sure that was a joke post in reference to the incident.
- rikkus 8y agoI’m pretty sure that you replied to a joke referencing that joke.
- abledon 8y agohow would they track who flew the drones? I guess UK camera network is paying off?
- IshKebab 8y agoYeah because there are loads of CCTV cameras pointing at the sky... The "UK camera network" is a bit of a myth by the way. Yes there are cameras, but not a gazillion per person as normally claimed, and the vast majority of them a privately owned cameras that the police do not have easy access to. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_Kingdom#Number_of_cameras https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Uni...
- philip1209 8y agoHello from Gatwick airport. Arrived Wednesday evening. About to board my third scheduled flight. I hope it doesn't get cancelled again! As an American, the British response to this seems very restrained. If this incident happened in the USA, I would have expected tight, armed security everywhere in the airport. Gatwick just seems like business as usual.
- tomalpha 8y agoThat seems about right. There doesn’t appear to be an armed threat against the airport. Lots more guns would seem like security theatre. (Not that that doesn’t happen ever).
- CydeWeys 8y agoAs an American, I wouldn't expect heavily armed security everywhere in response to a drone. It wouldn't make sense. Now if I saw police with trap/skeet shotguns aiming to take down the drone, that would make sense.
- olivermarks 8y agoI wonder if Gatwick used their Aeyreon Skyranger drones to track the drones http://www.guildford-dragon.com/2016/04/08/49799/ http://www.guildford-dragon.com/2016/04/08/49799/ Odd that there has been no news footage of the offending drones, you'd think they would be very visible...
- DougBTX 8y agoBest I’ve seen was https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-46649704 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-46649704
- olivermarks 8y agoexactly...
- olivermarks 8y agohttps://www.aeryon.com/skyranger/r60/ https://www.aeryon.com/skyranger/r60/ 'tracks objects up to 3 miles away...' Vector Target Tracking Aeryon’s Vector Target Tracking software automatically targets and tracks moving objects up to 3 miles away. The tracking algorithm adapts in real-time to changes in target shape and maintains a hold on the target even when its position changes or another object obstructs the view. Moving Target Indication of up to 10 Objects In Both EO and IR Calculate Target Heading and Speed
- Havoc 8y agoGiven that it apparently buzzed past the tower that does seem strange. Conspiracy theorists are already out in full force lol
- baybal2 8y agohttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/623/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/623/made
- baybal2 8y agoIn UK, nobody can legally fly an RC plane without a permission of nobody other than a Chief of Defence Staff himself... Yet, all and everybody who fly drones recreationally don'y even know of the regulation. > Prior to apply for operation approval via Form CAA/AS/017, you are required to obtain the Security Clearance from the Office of the Chief of Defence Staff (OCDS) for the Operation of the Drone using below Fax or e-mail.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoHardly surprising no one in the UK knows of this when you quote from CAA Sri Lanka regulations. https://www.caa.lk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=731 https://www.caa.lk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article...
- baybal2 8y agoFacepalm, that's the wrong quote. But I am sure there is a similar regulation in UK that effectively bars all RC toys from flying without a license that was introduced around seventies. I did a number of drone projects, and legals were quite sure that UK had a mandatory drone registration.
- barnabee 8y agoNope. RC aircraft are fine and have very clear laws https://www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Unmanned-aircraft/Model-aircraft/ https://www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Unmanned-aircraft/Model-airc... As do drones, which have been updated fairly recently and only require a license (for now at least…) for large drones or commercial usage https://www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Unmanned-aircraft-and-drones/ https://www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Unmanned-aircraft-and-drones...
- baybal2 8y agoWell, thanks for correcting me on that if that's the case. If you work within the field, you surely have a more up to date idea how that works.
- dharma1 8y agoSo which drone was it? 3D Robotics?
- konraditurbe 8y agoEither a hacked off the shelf drone or a custom built one
- singularity2001 8y agoit would probably take too long to fly in the drone catching eagle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5DEg2qZzkU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5DEg2qZzkU https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/01/watch-this-trained-eagle-take-down-a-flying-drone/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/01/watch-this-trained-eagle-t...
- buboard 8y agocouldn't they just shoot them down?
- justtopost 8y agoYes, but guns are loud and scary. Its all pretty wacky. It seems they wanted it to continue or something. Even the british military isn't this inept. They themselves demoed a drone weapon just months ago, but where was it? This has to be a huge black eye to everyone involved.
- buboard 8y agoit would make sense to delay nuking it for 1-2 hours, but an entire day is rather unacceptable.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- FlowNote 8y agoGiven the shockingly naive comments about drone disabling being proposed, I'm going to assume only a very tiny handful of people who visit this site has ever flown or seen a drone before. Let's cure some of this naivety: - GPS jamming doesn't jam video feed. - Wifi and radio jamming doesn't stop landmark-driven/return-to-home navigation. - UK refusal to fire on the craft is absurd because rubber bullets, simunitions, and less-than-lethal rounds are more than capable of destabilizing the hull and structure of the craft... while inflicting no damage on distant landed craft or personnel. (I wouldn't expect HN to know this, tbh) -Sending piles of off-the-shelf consumer drones up to ram into it would have been sufficient as well. Because of those last two points, the bumbling incompetence of UK security forces suggests to me that this event is purely pretext for even more rigid anti-drone legislation in a country that already has extreme anti-drone legislation. If true, then the question is, "What has changed that has made Airstrip One suddenly paranoid about drones?"
- CydeWeys 8y agoThe wild speculation happens for every subject area here. It's obvious in areas that I know anything about, and it also reminds me to take everything else outside of tech's core competencies with a huge grain of salt.
- AceyMan 8y agoYup. I posited this when I was a young pup, then found out some dude beat me to it <wink>: see, Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect?wprov...
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoWhat "extreme anti-drone legislation" is that? Seems pretty common sense and light to me: https://dronesafe.uk https://dronesafe.uk Registration is a year away.
- dogma1138 8y ago>- UK refusal to fire on the craft is absurd because rubber bullets, simunitions, and less-than-lethal rounds are more than capable of destabilizing the hull and structure of the craft... while inflicting no damage on distant landed craft or personnel. (I wouldn't expect HN to know this, tbh) I think the only naive person here is you. Firstly rubber bullets like those used for crowd control are fired form either a special barrel break or from a 40mm underbarell attachment (grenade launcher). These are disks made out of steel covered with a thick layer of rubber and they are inaccurate as fuck, you will not hit a man sized target even at 50 yards with them yet alone a drone. The other option is various shotgun polymer slugs which have a slightly better accuracy but still hitting a drone size target is nearly impossible. You’re best bet is birdshot it then again you are limited with range. However you still have the issue that the police isn’t trained nor equipped to fire at drones and until they can be achieved they have no option. And even if you train those policemen to effectively hit drones those drones aren’t easily accessible and fly out of reach. The previous incident last week which also shutdown the airport had a drone at 10,000 feet, but even a few 100’s of feet would put the drone outside of the range of anything that you could plausibly use at an airport. That said since these drones only have a short loitering time and even if they are shot down the police still needs to investigate and clear the area to ensure that there are not other drones and to collect any evidence and statements you don’t gain anything by shooting them down the airspace would still be locked down for just as long. So when your decision is to try to shoot drones you likely can’t hit to cut their loitering time by 5-10 min at best while potentially endangering the field or people or to wait for them to fly back to their owner in the hopes of catching them it’s not a hard decision at all and doesn’t show any level of incompetence on the behalf of the British police. P.S. in every case effectively the shutdown came after the drones have left the area already, they are only there for a few minutes the airport is huge by the time the police can even get close they are gone but then order is then issued to ensure that there are no more drones in the area. Unless we will start putting on phalanx installations every couple of 100’s or yards around the perimeter of the airport there is no kinetic way to shoot these things down.
- i_am_proteus 8y agoI'm not saying this would have worked at Gatwick because I was not on the ground there, but GPS can be "spoofed" locally for specific vehicles. http://www.engr.utexas.edu/features/humphreysspoofing http://www.engr.utexas.edu/features/humphreysspoofing
- tyingq 8y agoI wonder if you could train kamakazi birds with a tangling net trailing behind them.
- slig 8y agoThere are some videos of hawks being trained to hit drones.
- josefresco 8y agoSurprised they didn't bust out the Eagle Anti-Drone system: https://www.popsci.com/dutch-anti-drone-police-eagles-ready-for-duty https://www.popsci.com/dutch-anti-drone-police-eagles-ready-... Yes ... Eagles as in the bird.w Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1842/ https://xkcd.com/1842/