To date, it has always been reported that drones can potentially be hacked and a few cases where they, in fact, had been successfully hacked. What we were never privy to were the detailed images of those hacked drones.
However, thanks to The Intercept, this is no longer the case. The Intercept revealed that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) worked alongside British Intelligence Services, Governments Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), to systematically hack Israeli drones from within Cyprus.
The respective agencies wanted to compile detailed information on Israeli operations in Gaza, Palestine, and Iran as well as to snoop on Israeli drone capabilities.
Leaked documents which were provided by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden and reported by The Intercept show that under the auspices of the ‘Anarchist’ program, intelligence services of UK and USA collected snapshot images from Israeli drones along with mapping data detailing paths taken.
These detailed images were all collected between 2009 and 2010 although The Intercept noted that Intelligence reports from GCHQ and NSA extended prior to and beyond these dates (2008-2012) as reported by the JPost.
Here are the images of hacked Israeli drones feeds:
On January 28, 2010, GCHQ analysts on Cyprus captured six minutes of video from what appears to be a Heron TP, a giant drone manufactured by the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
This is another image taken from a Heron TP, intercepted on February 9, 2010. The Heron TP or Eitan (meaning “strong” or “steadfast”) has an 85-foot wingspan, can carry a 1-ton load, and can stay aloft for up to 36 hours. It has been described in the press as “the drone that can reach Iran.”
This snapshot from a 14-second-long video dated July 13, 2009, was recorded at 4:51 in the morning and shows what appears to be an Aerostar Tactical UAV flying at low altitude.
Another snapshot shows what appears to be the landing gear of a drone. Sweetman, of Aviation Week, suggested that it was an Aerostar Tactical UAV.
Anarchists also tracked the location of drones. This map shows movement data collected on June 24, 2009, from an Israeli drone of an unspecified type. Several locations are recorded, including one north of Nablus, a city in the West Bank, and another further southwest in the West Bank
This image comes from a PowerPoint presentation and shows a video still from an Iranian-made Ababil III drone flying out of western Syria. The signal was captured by Anarchist analysts and recorded on March 11, 2012.
This image is from a March 2008 internal NSA newsletter celebrating the successful capture of video from the cockpit of an Israeli F-16 during unrest in the Gaza Strip. The newsletter describes a “14-second-long video” captured on January 3, 2008, which “showed an ‘unbroken line’ running through the targeting display, indicating that the target being tracked was on the ground.” On that same day, Israeli airstrikes and shelling from tanks reportedly killed nine people in Gaza.
This blurred image was recorded on August 25, 2009, the same day that news agencies reported that the IDF bombed a smuggler tunnel in Gaza, killing three Palestinians inside. According to an Anarchist document, the signal was “too poor to process” further.
This image was intercepted early on the morning of January 7, 2010. Based on the display markings, like the dial in the upper right-hand corner, it appears to be from a drone made by the company Aeronautics. (This video from the manufacturer shows a similar view.) The image indicates that this model was equipped with Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera.
This is an IAI Searcher MK III, according to Sweetman. The Searcher was developed in the 1980s, but is still used by the Israel Defense Forces and by a number of other countries.
This snapshot from a 14-second-long video dated July 13, 2009, was recorded at 4:51 in the morning and shows what appears to be an Aerostar Tactical UAV flying at low altitude.
This is another shot of a Heron TP, taken almost six minutes into a recording captured on June 9, 2010. There is no visible missile mount or payload, but the drone appears to be carrying a modification, which Sweetman called a “ventral pannier.” Publicly available photos show similar storage compartments under the main hull.
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