Drone Blind Spots: Pentesting the Airspace Above Critical Infrastructure
Alec Hunter
BSides Seattle 2026 · Day 1 · Track 1
Alec Hunter, who operates under the moniker "breathadare," delivered a compelling talk on a security domain most cybersecurity professionals never consider: the airspace above critical infrastructure. With five years of drone-focused cyber-physical security consulting and a decade of commercial drone operations, Hunter makes the case that America's 16 CISA-designated critical infrastructure sectors are almost entirely undefended against drone threats, and that penetration testers should expand into aerial assessments.
AI review
Hunter opens a genuinely underexplored attack surface for the cybersecurity community. The aerial pen testing methodology is well-structured, the custom drone builds (AI recon, mother ship relay, threat effects) show real offensive creativity, and the finding that critical infrastructure has near-zero drone detection is a damning indictment. This is more of a practitioner's field guide than deep technical research, but it defines a new specialization that deserves attention.