The US government's unmanned Predator and Reaper drones are continuingto fly remote missions overseas despite a computer virus that has infected the plane's US-basedcockpits, according to one source familiar with the infection.
Government officials are still investigating whether the virus is benign, and how it managed toinfect the heavily protected computer systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where USpilots 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 thesource, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Armed tactical unmanned planes have become an increasingly valuable tool used by the USgovernment to track and attack individuals and small groups overseas, but the virusunderscores the vulnerability of such systems to attacks on the computer networks used to flythem from great distances.
Wired magazine first reported the virus infection on its website on Friday and said it was loggingpilots' 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 military's Host-BasedSecurity System, but there were no confirmed incidents of classified information being lost orsent to an outside source.
The virus had resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech's computers, Wired said,quoting network security specialists.
The US military and intelligence communities have used Predator and Reaper drones, built byprivately held General Atomics in San Diego, to carry out increasingly precise attacks on top AlQaeda officials and other US targets in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Last week, US officials confirmed that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric linked to AlQaeda, was killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen.
In August, al Qaeda's second-in-command, Atiyah abd al-Rahman was killed in a drone strike innorthwest Pakistan. Ilyas Kashmiri, an alleged leader of both al Qaeda and one of its Pakistan-based affiliates, was killed in a suspected US drone strike in June.
The US military has achieved its goal of flying 60 combat air patrols overseas with theunmanned planes, according to one US defense official.
The CIA now operates Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft over at least five countriesincluding Yemen, Afghanistan and Libya.
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