US drones keep flying despite system virus

Government officials are still investigating whether the virus in the drone system is benign, and how it managed to infect the heavily protected computer systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where US pilots remotely fly the planes on their missions over Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.Something is going on, but it has not had any impact on the missions overseas, said the source, who was not authorised to speak publicly.Armed tactical unmanned planes have become an increasingly valuable tool used by the US government to track and attack individuals and small groups overseas, but the virus underscores the vulnerability of such systems to attacks on the computer networks used to fly them from great distances.Wired magazine first reported the virus infection on its website on Friday and said it was logging pilots every keystroke as they remotely flew missions over Afghanistan and elsewhere.Wired said the problem was first detected nearly two weeks ago by the US militarys Host-Based Security System, but there were no confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source.The virus had resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creechs computers, Wired said, quoting network security specialists.