computer virus hits US drones

[VJ]

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”

It has a key logger and they call it benign?

The fact that any malware gets in to this system is worrying. Those things can carry weapons, if the security on them is this poor then it is just a matter of time before much worse things happen.

[Technoid]

Every time I hear about some "Hacking" into pentagon or anywhere else military I wonder whatever their IT security is missing or incompetent. In the case of the poor ufo moron from uk for example that apparently broke into the pentagon from his home using the public internet the answer must be; security of the equivalent of a 10$ chain and a 5$ lock

[KRSESQ]

The best security won't work if you have office workers bringing their thumbdrives to work with them so they can listen to their music, and infecting the entire network with God-knows-what kind of malware they've unwittingly downloaded. It's a serious problem for a lot of private and government networks.

In a recent test a security company scattered a number of thumbdrives in an office parking lot. Most of the people who found them plugged them into their office computer right away to see what they had found!

[VJ]

True....
but I would expect people there to for instance have a fully shielded/separate network, which can even be running on virtual machines to separate it. On virtual machines it would even be possible to not allow any unknown hardware to be connected.
I would also expect the drones to use a more custom system, so that a regular user-targetting malware would not be functional on it.