Who would have thought that with some technical know how and an interest in DIY projects, this particular duo of an airplane hobby shop owners as well as an ex-Air Force official managed to conjure a flying drone which is smart enough to crack into Wi-Fi and cell phones. Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins, the dynamic duo, are the brains and hands behind the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform (WASP for short) – a flying drone which sports a 6-foot wingspan, a 6-foot length and tipping the scale at 14 pounds.
Being so small, it cannot be detected by radar as most controllers would probably dismiss it to be some sort of large bird instead. Built with an Army target drone as the base, it was then converted to run on electric batteries in favor of gasoline. You can load it up with the relevant GPS co-ordinates so that it will fly a predetermined course sans an operator.
Its main ability? To crack Wi-Fi networks and GSM networks, while collecting data from them. This is made possible courtesy of a built-in Linux computer alongside 32GB of storage space to stash away all the “stolen” data. Needless to say, networking hacking tools such as the BackTrack toolset and a 340-million-word dictionary are used to guess passwords and gain entry into Wi-Fi networks. Interestingly enough, this does not contravene with any FCC regulation – surprising?