Welcome back, aspiring cyberwarriors!

I want you to imagine a scene for a moment. You are sitting at your keyboard on one of the upper floors of a secure building in the middle of a restricted area. There is a tall fence topped with electrified barbed wire. Cameras cover every angle. Security guards patrol with confidence. You feel untouchable. Then you hear it. It’s a faint buzzing sound outside the window. You glance over for just a moment, wondering what it is. That tiny distraction is enough. In those few seconds, a small device silently installs a backdoor on your workstation. Somewhere 20 kilometers away, a hacker now has a path into the corporate network. 

That may sound like something out of a movie, but it is not science fiction. In this series, we are going to walk through the process of building a drone that can perform wireless attacks such as EAP attacks, MouseJack, Kismet reconnaissance, and similar operations. A drone is an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of a malicious actor because it can carry roughly a third of its own weight as payload. But “hacking through the air” is not easy. A proper hacker drone must be autonomous, controllable over a secure channel at long distances, and resilient to jamming or suppression systems. Today we will talk through how such drones are designed and how they can be built from readily available components.

Most wireless attacks require the attacker to be physically near the target. The problem is that you can’t reach every building, every fenced facility, and every rooftop. A drone changes the entire equation. It can fly under windows, slip through partially open spaces, or even be transported inside a parcel. As a boxed payload moves through residential or office buildings, it can quietly perform wireless attacks without anyone ever suspecting what is inside. And yes, drones are used this way in the real world, including military and intelligence operations. On June 1, 2025, over 100 FPV drones that were smuggled into Russia, were concealed in modified wooden cabins on trucks, and remotely launched from positions near multiple Russian airbases. These drones conducted precision strikes on parked aircraft at bases including Belaya, Dyagilevo, Ivanovo Severny, Olenya, and Ukrainka, reportedly damaging or destroying more than 40 strategic bombers and other high-value assets.

The FPV drones were equipped with mobile modems using Russian SIM cards to connect to local 3G/4G cellular networks inside Russia. This setup enabled remote operators in Ukraine to receive real-time high-resolution video feeds and telemetry, as well as maintain manual control over the drones via software like ArduPilot Mission Planner. The cellular connection allowed precise piloting from thousands of kilometers away, bypassing traditional radio frequency limitations and Russian electronic warfare jamming in some cases. In Part 2 we will show you how this type of connection can be established.

Drones are everywhere. They are affordable. They are also flexible. But what can they really do for a hacker? The key strength of a drone is that it can carry almost anything lightweight. This instantly increases the operational range of wireless attacks, allowing equipment to quickly and silently reach places a human cannot. A drone can scale fences, reach high-rise windows, hover near targets, and potentially enter buildings. All while remaining difficult to trace. That is an enormous advantage.

Let’s start learning how the platform works.

Implementation

Most drones are radio-controlled, but the exact communication method varies. One channel is used to receive operator commands (RX) and another to transmit video and telemetry back to the operator (TX). Different drones use different communication combinations, such as dedicated radio systems like FRSKY, ELRS, or TBS for control, and either analog or digital channels for video. Some consumer drones use Wi-Fi for telemetry or even control both ways.

For a hacker, the drone is first and foremost a transport platform. It must be reliable and durable. When you are performing attacks near buildings, lamp posts, tight corridors, or window frames, high speed becomes far less important than protecting the propellers. This is why Cinewhoop-style drones with protective frames are such a strong choice. If the drone brushes a wall, the frame absorbs the impact and keeps it flying. You can find the 3D models of it here

The drone also needs enough lifting power to carry your hacking gear. Ideally at least one-third of its own weight. That allows you to attach devices such as Wi-Fi attack platforms, SDR tools, or compact computers without stressing the motors. Because distance matters, Wi-Fi-controlled drones are usually not ideal. Wi-Fi range is typically around 50–100 meters before responsiveness begins to degrade. Professional long-range drones that use dedicated control radios like FRSKY, ELRS, or TBS are a better fit. Under good conditions, these systems can maintain control several kilometers away. Since attackers typically operate near structures, precise control is critical. FPV drones are especially useful here. They allow the pilot to “see” through the drone’s camera in real time, which is essential when maneuvering near buildings or through tight openings. Open-source flight controller platforms such as Betaflight are really attractive. They are flexible, modifiable, and easy to service. If the frame is damaged in a crash, most of the core components can be reused.

In truth, the specific drone model is less important than the pilot’s skill. Good piloting matters. Before we look at attacks, we need to understand how control can be improved and how it can be extended beyond visual range.

Control via 4G

Flying a drone among urban buildings introduces challenges like concrete and steel obstruct radio signals, limiting line-of-sight range. Even if your drone has a long-range radio system, once it disappears behind a building, control becomes unreliable. But what if you could control the drone over mobile networks instead? Modern 4G cellular networks now offer reliable data coverage even inside many urban structures. If we can use cellular data as a control channel, the drone’s reachable range becomes limited only by its battery life, not by line-of-sight. Today’s 4G networks can provide sufficient bandwidth for both control signals and video feeds. Although the latency and responsiveness are not as good as dedicated radio links, they are quite usable for piloting a drone in many scenarios. Considering that drones can reach speeds up to 200 km/h and have flight times measured in tens of minutes, an attacker theoretically could operate a drone more than 20 km away from the controller using 4G connectivity.

4G > Wi-Fi Gateway > Drone

The simplest way to use 4G connectivity is to bridge it to the drone’s Wi-Fi interface. Most consumer drones broadcast a Wi-Fi access point that a mobile phone connects to for control. Commands are sent over UDP packets, and video is streamed back as an RTSP feed. In this setup, the drone already acts like a networked device. If you attach a small computing device with a 4G modem, you could connect to it over a VPN from anywhere, and relay commands to the drone. But this approach has major drawbacks. The control protocol is often closed and proprietary, making it difficult to reverse-engineer and properly relay. Additionally, these protocols send frequent packets to maintain responsiveness, which would saturate your 4G channel and compete with video transmission.

4G > Video Gateway > Drone

A much cleaner alternative is to use a video gateway approach. Instead of trying to tunnel the drone’s native protocol over the cellular link, you attach a small smartphone to the drone and connect it to the drone’s Wi-Fi. The phone itself becomes a bridge. It controls the drone locally and receives video. From the remote operator’s perspective, you are simply remoting into the phone, much like remote controlling any computer. The phone’s screen shows the drone’s video feed, and the operator interacts with the virtual sticks via remote desktop software. The phone app already handles control packet encoding, so there’s no need to reverse-engineer proprietary protocols.

This clever hack solves multiple problems at once. The phone maintains a strong local Wi-Fi link to the drone, which is hard to jam at such short range. The operator sees a video feed that survives 4G network variations better than high-bandwidth native streams. And because the app handles stick input, the operator doesn’t need to worry about throttle, roll, pitch, or yaw encoding.

You can connect to the phone over 4G from any device using remote-access software like AnyDesk. With simple GUI automation tools, you can bind keyboard keys to virtual controller actions on the phone screen.

Here is the Bash script that will help with it. You can find the link to it here

This Bash script allows you to control virtual joysticks once you connect via AnyDesk to the phone. You will use the keyboard to simulate mouse actions. When launched, the script identifies the emulator window (using xwininfo, which requires you to click on the window once), calculates the centers of the left and right virtual sticks based on fixed offsets from the window’s corner, and then enters a loop waiting for single key presses.

For each key (A/B for throttle, W/S/A/D for pitch and roll, Q/E for yaw), the script uses xdotool to move the cursor to the virtual stick, simulate a short swipe in the desired direction, and release. This effectively mimics a touchscreen joystick movement. The script runs on Linux with X11 (Xorg), requires xdotool and x11-utils, and gives a simple keyboard-based alternative for drone control when a physical gamepad isn’t available. Although Kali Linux is not suitable here, many other distros such as Debian Stable, antiX, Devuan, Linux Mint, openSUSE, Zorin OS, or Peppermint OS work well. So while Kali is often the go-to for security work, there’s still a list of usable operating systems.

Telemetry data is also available to the remote operator.

In the system we describe, another script monitors screen regions where telemetry values are displayed, uses OCR (optical character recognition) to extract numbers, and can then process them.

Here is another bash script that will help us with this. It will repeatedly screenshot a selected drone ground control window, crop out the battery and altitude display areas, use OCR to extract the numeric values, print them to the terminal, and speak a “low battery” warning if the percentage drops below 10%..

Find it on our GitHub here

With control and telemetry automated, full 4G-based drone operation becomes extremely flexible. This method is easy to implement and immediately gives you both control and status feedback. However, it does introduce an extra link, which is the Wi-Fi phone. The phone’s Wi-Fi signal may interfere with the drone’s normal operation, and the drone must carry some extra weight (about 50 grams) for this setup. In Part 2, we will go further. We will move from 4G > Wi-Fi > Drone to 4G > UART > Drone, using a custom VPN and SIM. That means the phone disappears completely, and commands are sent directly to the flight controller and motor control hardware. This will give us more flexibility.

That brings us to the end of Part 1.

Summary

Drones are rapidly transforming from hobby toys into serious tools across warfare, policing, intelligence, and hacking. A drone can slip past fences, scale buildings, hover near windows, and quietly deliver wireless attack platforms into places humans cannot reach. It opens doors to an enormous spectrum of radio-based attacks, from Wi-Fi exploitation to Bluetooth hijacking and beyond. For attackers, it means unprecedented reach. 

See you in Part 2 where we begin preparing the drone for real-world offensive operations

The post Drone Hacking: Build Your Own Hacking Drone, Part 1 first appeared on Hackers Arise.

Bitcoin Magazine

Jack Mallers’ Twenty One Capital Wins Approval for CEP Merger, Poised for Public Debut on Nasdaq

Twenty One Capital, Inc. (“Twenty One”) led by CEO Jack Mallers and Cantor Equity Partners, Inc. (“CEP”) announced on the 3rd of December that their shareholders approved the combination of the two businesses, meaning that Twenty One is set to go public very soon.  

The vote is expected to have received a lot of attention from retail shareholders, as the  Mallers announced it on their podcast to more than 43 thousand subscribers and their X with half a million followers.  The vote took place at the Extraordinary General Meeting of CEP’s shareholders, who approved the previously announced proposed business combination between the parties as well as all other proposals related to the Business Combination.

“The final voting results for the Meeting will be included in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by CEP,” according to a press release published by the company. 

Subject to the satisfaction of other closing conditions described in the CEP’s definitive proxy statement and Twenty One’s final prospectus, the consummation of the related transactions should take place in the coming days, leading to Twenty One Capital, Inc. and its Class A common stock to start trading on the NYSE with the symbol “XXI” on December 9th, 2025.

The company is expected to exit its “quiet period” after this point and make a series of announcements about the future of the business. XXI announced earlier this year that it had received investment from Tether and Softbank, leading to the purchase of 42,000 bitcoins, which will position it as one of the largest public owners of the asset and is expected to unlock new financial service offers for Strike customers, Jack’s growing Bitcoin financial services app, and Cash App competitor. 

You can read the full press release on the vote here for full disclaimers and details.

This post Jack Mallers’ Twenty One Capital Wins Approval for CEP Merger, Poised for Public Debut on Nasdaq first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Hacktivism and geopolitically motivated APT groups have become a significant threat to many regions of the world in recent years, damaging infrastructure and important functions of government, business, and society. In late 2022 we predicted that the involvement of hacktivist groups in all major geopolitical conflicts from now on will only increase and this is what we’ve been observing throughout the years. With regard to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, this has led to a sharp increase of activities carried out by groups that identify themselves as either pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian.

The rise in cybercrime amid geopolitical tensions is alarming. Our Kaspersky Cyber Threat Intelligence team has been observing several geopolitically motivated threat actors and hacktivist groups operating in various conflict zones. Through collecting and analyzing extensive data on these groups’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), we’ve discovered a concerning trend: hacktivists are increasingly interconnected with financially motivated groups. They share tools, infrastructure, and resources.

This collaboration has serious implications. Their campaigns may disrupt not only business operations but also ordinary citizens’ lives, affecting everything from banking services to personal data security or the functioning of the healthcare system. Moreover, monetized techniques can spread exponentially as profit-seeking actors worldwide replicate and refine them. We consider these technical findings a valuable resource for global cybersecurity efforts. In this report, we share observations on threat actors who identify themselves as pro-Ukrainian.

About this report

The main goal of this report is to provide technical evidence supporting the theory we’ve proposed based on our previous research: that most of the groups we describe here actively collaborate, effectively forming three major threat clusters.

This report includes:

• A library of threat groups, current as of 2025, with details on their main TTPs and tools.
• A technical description of signature tactics, techniques, procedures, and toolsets used by these groups. This information is intended for practical use by SOC, DFIR, CTI, and threat hunting professionals.

What this report covers

This report contains information on the current TTPs of hacktivists and APT groups targeting Russian organizations particularly in 2025, however they are not limited to Russia as a target. Further research showed that among some of the groups’ targets, such as CloudAtlas and XDSpy, were assets in European, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries. In particular, traces of infections were discovered in 2024 in Slovakia and Serbia. The report doesn’t include groups that emerged in 2025, as we didn’t have sufficient time to research their activity. We’ve divided all groups into three clusters based on their TTPs:

• Cluster I combines hacktivist and dual-purpose groups that use similar tactics, techniques, and tools. This cluster is characterized by:
• Shared infrastructure
• A unique software suite
• Identical processes, command lines, directories, and so on
• Distinctive TTPs
• Cluster II comprises APT groups that have different TTPs from the hacktivists. Among these, we can distinguish simple APTs (characterized by their use of third-party utilities, scripts that carry out all the malicious logic, shared domain registrars, and concealing their real infrastructure behind reverse proxy systems – for example, using Cloudflare services), and more sophisticated ones (distinguished by their unique TTPs).
• Cluster III includes hacktivist groups for which we’ve observed no signs of collaboration with other groups described here.

Example: Cyberthreat landscape in Russia in 2025

Hacktivism remains the key threat to Russian businesses and businesses in other conflict areas today, and the scale and complexity of these attacks keep growing. Traditionally, the term “hacktivism” refers to a blend of hacking and activism, where attackers use their skills to achieve social or political goals. Over the past few years, these threat actors have become more experienced and organized, collaborating with one another and sharing knowledge and tools to achieve common objectives.

Additionally, a new phenomenon known as “dual-purpose groups” has appeared in the Russian threat landscape in recent years. We’ve detected links between hacktivists and financially motivated groups. They use the same tools, techniques, and tactics, and even share common infrastructure and resources. Depending on the victim, they may pursue a variety of goals: demanding a ransom to decrypt data, causing irreparable damage, or leaking stolen data to the media. This suggests that these attackers belong to a single complex cluster.

Beyond this, “traditional” categories of attackers continue to operate in Russia and other regions: groups engaged in cyberespionage and purely financially motivated threat actors also remain a significant problem. Like other groups, geopolitically motivated groups are cybercriminals who undermine the secure and trustworthy use of digitalization opportunities and they can change and adapt their target regions depending on political developments.

That is why it is important to also be aware of the TTPs used by threat actors who appear to be attacking other targets. We will continue to monitor geopolitically motivated threat actors and publish technical reports about their TTPs.

Recommendations

To defend against the threats described in this report, Kaspersky experts recommend the following:

• Provide your SOC teams with access to up-to-date information on the latest attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Threat intelligence feeds from reliable providers, like Kaspersky Threat Intelligence, can help with this.
• Use a comprehensive security solution that combines centralized monitoring and analysis, advanced threat detection and response, and security incident investigation tools. The Kaspersky NEXT XDR platform provides this functionality and is suitable for medium and large businesses in any industry.
• Protect every component of modern and legacy industrial automation systems with specialized OT security solutions. Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity (KICS) — an XDR-class platform — ensures reliable protection for critical infrastructure in energy, manufacturing, mining, and transportation.
• Conduct regular security awareness training for employees to reduce the likelihood of successful phishing and other social engineering attacks. Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness Platform is a good option for this.

The report is available for our partners and customers. If you are interested, please contact report@kaspersky.com

The post DNS Hijacking – Taking Over Top-Level Domains and Subdomains appeared first on Detectify Blog.

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