World | Updated Dec 18, 2009 at 12:42pm IST

Iraqi insurgents hack into drone spy videos

Press Trust Of India

Washington: Insurgents in Iraq have hacked into live video feeds from Predator drones, the US military's eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection.

A senior defence official says militants could see the video, but there is no evidence they were able to jam the electronic signals from the unmanned aerial crafts or take control of them. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence issues.

The Wall Street Journall first reported on Thursday that Shiite fighters in Iraq used off-the-shelf software programmes such as SkyGrabber - available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet - to regularly capture drone video feeds.

The hacking was possible because some of the planes have an unprotected

communications link.

Officials say the Defence Department is working to encrypt the drone feeds.

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