Well this can only end well. The US Air Force’s unmanned combat drones in the “Predator” and “Reaper” class have been infected with computer viruses that they can’t get rid of, in case you weren’t sufficiently terrified of the world when you woke up this morning.

The virus hasn’t had any impact on the drones’ functionality, as pilots continue to complete overseas missions from the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Instead, the virus is recording every keystroke the pilots are making while in control of the drones, and presumably sending this information to some third party – although evidence of this has yet to emerge.

More worrying is the fact that the virus has resisted multiple attempts by security specialists to remove it from their network; apparently just switching it off and on again doesn’t do the trick anymore.

Say the guys over at WIRED:

Military network security specialists aren’t sure whether the virus and its so-called “keylogger” payload were introduced intentionally or by accident; it may be a common piece of malware that just happened to make its way into these sensitive networks. The specialists don’t know exactly how far the virus has spread. But they’re sure that the infection has hit both classified and unclassified machines at Creech. That raises the possibility, at least, that secret data may have been captured by the keylogger, and then transmitted over the public internet to someone outside the military chain of command.

Feel free to add “fear of infected flying death machines” to your list.

[Source: LA Times]