News / Military

US military self-aiming rifles hacked through Wi-Fi bug

Thursday, 30 July 2015 4:07 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 30 July 2015 4:07 PM ]

Hackers have revealed a way to easily take over the control of American smart rifles that have computerized scopes.

Security researchers have successfully hacked into the brains of a self-aiming sniper rifle that was adopted by the US military a short while ago.

Hacking couple Runa Sandvik and Michael Auger have revealed a method to successfully manipulate or disable the computer that controls the scope on these rifles.

The rifle’s Achilles heel lies within its Linux OS and Wi-Fi connection which is used to stream videos from the digital viewfinder onto laptops and other similar devices.

Once the Wi-Fi connection becomes active, a default password shared on all rifles can be used by any user on the network to connect to the gun.

This potential vulnerability is put into use by hackers who take control of the rifle’s computer and feed it inaccurate data.

"You can make it lie constantly to the user so they'll always miss their shot," Sandvik was quoted as saying by Wired.

The attacker is said to be capable of choosing a completely new target and still take a bull’s eye on it.

Hackers are capable of permanently changing variables like wind velocity, and even the type and the weight of the bullet that the gun is loaded with, without user’s suspicion.

The attackers may also permanently lock the owner out of the rifle by defining a new PIN code.

The wireless attack however does not end here as the attacker can simply lock the trigger and then disable the whole computer which will render the $13,000 rifle useless.

Almost one year into its launch, the manufacturing company TrackingPoint, has sold more than a thousand of these smart rifles to ordinary Americans.

The United States army was also set to take these weapons into service and acquired a number of them for testing purposes last year but no additional info is released to the public in this regard.

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