An Iranian Engineer Claims Iran Hacked the Downed Drone's GPS

An anonymous Iranian engineer says Iran hacked the GPS system of the U.S. drone plane that landed in their territory this month, and guided it into their territory before letting it land.

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An anonymous Iranian engineer says Iran hacked the GPS system of the U.S. drone plane that landed in their territory this month, and guided it into their territory before letting it land. The Christian Science Monitor cites the engineer, who "who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets."

Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan

It sounds at first like a kind of absurd claim from a party that's got quite an interest in proving his nation's technological prowess, and no one in the U.S. likes to think our sophisticated technology is subject to a simple hack. But the reporters seem to take it seriously and they cite western military experts that say the technique sounds "plausible." Also, this does give explanation to the questions many have had about what kind of malfunction led to a very in-tact looking drone plane finding its way into Iranian hands. It'll be interesting to hear the U.S. response.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.