War drones keep flying despite computer virus
WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 7, 2011 10:55pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government's unmanned Predator and Reaper drones are continuing to fly remote missions overseas despite a computer virus that has infected the plane's U.S.-based cockpits, according to one source familiar with the infection.
Government officials are still investigating whether the virus is benign, and how it managed to infect the heavily protected computer systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where U.S. pilots remotely fly the planes on their missions over Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Wired magazine first reported the virus infection on its website on Friday and said it was logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely flew missions over Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Wired said the problem was first detected nearly two weeks ago by the U.S. military's Host-Based Security System, but there were no confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source.
The virus had resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech's computers, Wired said, quoting network security specialists.
This is the second major screw-up with the drones that I am aware of. The first one was transmitting the video feed without encryption.
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