Uh-oh

Computer virus infects U.S. drone fleet.

Photo by Bryan William Jones

In a post at wired.com’s Danger Room, Noah Shachtman reports that America’s fleet of Predator and Reaper drones has become infected with a virus that apparently logs each and every operator keystroke.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

“The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.”

“’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.’”

Read more here if you’re interested. And, um, why wouldn’t you be?

Update: check out this post at Hot Air. The comments are very interesting. And another, at the Blaze. Again, very interesting comments.

Who could possibly be behind this disturbing development? My own opinion: we need look no further than the People’s Republic of China. Or the Democrats.