Orqa, a company that makes First Person View (FPV) drone racing goggles, says a subcontractor approved firmware for its devices that acted like a time bomb ready to explode!
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On Saturday morning, Orqa began receiving reports from customers expressing surprise as they saw their FPV.One V1 goggles enter mode and become unusable.
“We started receiving reports from our pilots in Japan, very early in the morning while we were all still sleeping. Then in the early hours of the morning here in Europe, we started receiving reports,” the company said.
The company announced the times when problematic device handling was observed due to a firmware error, caused by the date/time feature.
"Within 5 or 6 hours of this crisis, early Saturday afternoon, we discovered that this mysterious issue was the result of ransomware, which had been secretly placed a few years ago in our bootloader by a greedy former contractor, with the intent of extorting ransom from the Company," Orqa said.
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«The perpetrator was particularly insidious, as he had maintained occasional business relations with us over the past few years, as he waited for this bomb to "explode", probably to avoid arousing suspicion and hoping that he could get more ransom as our business and market share grew.».
Orqa reports that the perpetrator behind the “ransomware attack” appears to have released an “unauthorized binary” that was intended to address the issues that the FPV.One goggles were causing since Saturday morning.
The company warns customers not to install unofficial software. It recently announced that an official version that fixes the problem is being tested with a small group of beta testers.
«Given that the perpetrator has made what he did public and has released what we fear is yet another compromised firmware , we have decided that it is in the best interest of our users to be informed of the situation and warned of the risks of installing a potentially compromised firmware on their devices ».
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It is expected that the new version of the stable firmware will be available by the end of the day, after its security has been checked for public use.
