DJI insisted drone-tracking AeroScope signals were encrypted — now it admits they aren’t

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Last month, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine accused DJI of helping Russia to kill Ukrainian civilians by allowing Russia to use a drone- tracking system called DJI AeroScope to target the exact location of Ukrainian drone pilots.

We wrote an in-depth explainer on what DJI AeroScope actually is, how it works, what it was designed for, and what, if anything, DJI could do to prevent people from getting killed using its tech. The company is now admitting that it wasn't being honest with us on at least one point. The AeroScope signals broadcast by every modern DJI drone are not actually secure.

Governments and others with technical ability may not need an AeroScope to see the exact location of every pilot.

Both Adam and David told us that the signals were secure. We checked with DJI again after hacker Kevin Finisterre suggested that was wrong. The claim that DJI admitted to was false after a month.

It's his fault, but he also tells us that his R&D contacts in China repeatedly told him it wasn't true, and that it took senior managers to admit it wasn't true.

It's not surprising that AeroScope signals are not visible to the naked eye. It won't be optional, and it's not clear to me if those signals will be secure, as governments like the United States are planning to mandate that your drone broadcasts your physical location by 2023.

We wanted to make sure the other information was correct so we pressed him on some of the claims. He admitted that, yes, there could be a premature revocation of an AeroScope certificate, though that would only affect stationary units that are connected to its ownAWS server, and that it could also theoretically see.

I have been told once again that the program that was found during the DJI data breach is not real. The program is said to be evidence that DJI is mining data on its users in China, but the company has denied that, saying it was just a proposal on how it could theoretically do some targeted advertising.

The AeroScope signals that the drones broadcast could be turned off remotely by the company. It appears there is a way to mask a pilot's coordinates by sending commands to the drone.

All shipments of products and after-sales support for both Russia and Ukraine were halted yesterday.