SkyGrabber: the $26 software used by insurgents to hack into US drones
"SkyGrabber is offline satellite internet downloader," the page begins confidently, at once informing the native English speaker that the page wasn't written by one. In fact SkyGrabber (skygrabber.com) is a Russian programme – the site is apparently run by Cherkashyn Vyacheslav in Nab Podeba, Ukraine.SkyGrabber is a simple enough concept: grab the signals that spill from a satellite broadcast (or even narrowcast), aimed from a satellite towards a specific location, and turn them into TV feeds you can look at. Or as the website puts it: "You don't have to keep an online internet connection. Just customise your satellite dish to selected satellite provider and start grabbing."The US drones would send their video up to a US military satellite (the "uplink") that cannot be intercepted. The signal would then be beamed by that satellite or a linked one down to the controllers – who might be in Afghanistan or Iraq....
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