Danger Drone: The $500 hacker laptop that takes flight

Danger Drone is the new laptop that is designed specifically to take flight and help conduct cyberattacks by allowing a hacker to physically get close to a target. The device was developed by security experts to aid penetration testers or pentesters bypass challenging aspects and ensuring organisations have effective defences against cyberattacks.

The $500 custom-developed Danger Drone is the brain-child of consulting firm Bishop Fox. "Think of it as a flying hacker laptop," Francis Brown, one of the two creators of the device told Motherboard. The device has been named after the infamous Top Gun song Highway To The Danger Zone, which inspired Brown to develop the flying hacker drone.

"Attacks that before people might not have done because people didn't want to put themselves personally at risk of getting caught—this kinda removes that," Brown said. "Now you can be a lot more brazen in your attacks, because you're not as worried about getting caught and going to jail."

The device can be remotely controlled via LTE and has a range of 1.2 miles. "It's about 800 grams, so the flight time is very good in comparison to a typical commercial drone that might only get 20 minutes of flight time," said David Latimer, the device's other creator, the EWeek reported. "The Danger Drone flight time is about 45 minutes."

Danger Drone has also be programmed with Rickmote capabilities. Given the device's abilities, Brown said that thanks to IoT (Internet of Things), the flying laptop will now have many more targets to pentest. "Over-the-air attacks are very attractive right now because there are a lot of immature IoT products out there," he added.

The device's most notable feature among others, is perhaps its ability to play Kenny Loggins' Danger Drone song from the Top Gun movie. "That was requirement No. 1!" Brown said. Danger Drone will not be sold commercially, instead it will be used by Bishop Fox to conduct penetration tests for its own clients.

Bishop Fox will show off its latest flying laptop drone at the upcoming Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas on 3 August.