What to do when an enemy drone comes calling

A drone has just entered your airspace, origin and destination unknown. Upon discovering the unmanned plane, do you a) shoot it down, or b) let it fly around a little longer to try to find out where it’s going and what it already knows about you?

Israel was recently put to that test; some harbor suspicions the country’s decision to shoot down the drone only once it approached the Dimona nuclear installation may have been part of an attempt to hack into the plane’s system and gain as much intelligence on it as the UAV was gaining on Israel.

Cyber warfare by hacking gangs or governments has long moved beyond servers connected to the Internet. “Hackers, whoever they were, managed to get into the Iranian nuclear system, which is almost certainly cut off from the Internet, as are all nuclear reactors around the world,” said Israeli security expert Shai Rod. “Anything with an operating system can be hacked. It’s just a matter of getting the virus or code in place.”