Almost a year after the launch of the Matrice 4T from Chinese drone market leader DJI, the Russian Telegram channel Ural Drone Hub reports that the drone has been “defeated”. This means that Russia is now able to flash the drone’s firmware so that it can be used for military purposes.
Ural Drone Hub explains that not all features of the legendary 1001 firmware of the Mavic and Matrice 3 models can yet be transferred to the successor. Accordingly, the militarized firmware is called “777” for the time being.
With firmware 777, Russian hackers have succeeded in removing the drone or remote ID. The remote ID is a digital license plate and enables remote identification of the drone. It is required in many countries – including throughout the European Union by the European Aviation Safety Agency – and is therefore part of the software package.
The hackers also managed to remove the no-fly zone (NFZ) restrictions. NFZs are part of the software and prevent the drone from operating in regulated areas.
The option to switch off GPS was also introduced, the altitude limits were removed, as was the restriction on not being able to climb above 60 meters without GPS. All country-specific restrictions were also removed. It was also possible to unlock additional frequencies in the 5 GHz band.
So far, there has apparently been no success with the FCC approval. FCC approvals allow the drone and remote control to increase the maximum transmission power significantly above the legally permitted values. In the case of the Mavic 3, this resulted in a jump from 25 mW and 4 channels to 700 mW and 8 channels.
Ural Drone Hub states that some Matrice 4T drones cannot be flashed – in these cases there is no way to fix the problem. The channel explicitly points out to its users that the hack is intended exclusively for use in the SVO zone of the “special military operation” (Russian attack on Ukraine) is authorized.
It should be noted that, in contrast to the predecessor models of the 3 series, it took considerably longer to break into the manufacturer’s firmware. DJI has repeatedly criticized the military use of its civilian drones and taken various protective measures – mostly with limited success. With the current model, however, DJI appears to have succeeded in implementing significantly more effective countermeasures against misuse in the hacker scene.
However, software modification is not only in demand in the military sector; numerous instructions can be found online with the aim of freeing commercial drones from their legal and regulatory restrictions.
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