Hacker Caught Selling Maintenance Manuals for Military Drones

Until last week, you could have purchased one of the U.S.military’s training manuals for the MQ-9 Reaper drone, along with a maintenance manual for the Abrams tank, a guide to defeating IEDs, and other sensitive materials, thanks to a hacker who put the stolen materials up for sale online. The theft and attempted sale were brought to light by cybersecurity and threat intelligence group Recorded Future, which published a report about the incident and is working with law enforcement personnel on it. Recorded Future officials said they got involved last week when they noticed a suspicious-looking online advertisement for the manuals, a list of airmen within a unit assigned to the drone’s maintenance, and more. They contacted the thief, who said that he had hacked his way to the materials after an Air Force captain with the 432d Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada failed to properly set transfer protocol settings on his NETGEAR router, a widely-known vulnerability.