One of America's most sophisticated weapons in the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the unmanned drone, has been successfully hacked by insurgents using software available on the internet for $26 (£16).
Insurgents in Iraq have intercepted live video feeds from the drones being relayed back to a US controller and revealing potential targets.
A US official said the flaw had been identified and fixed in the last 12 months.
The problem only came to light after the US found hours and hours worth of videotaped recordings on militant laptops late last year and earlier this year.
The insurgents used software programmes such as Skygrabber, developed by a Russian company, originally intended to download music and videos from the internet.
The drones, which cost about $4.5m each, have become one of the most important parts of the US armoury. Their use by the US military has increased 600% in the last five years.
They are able to hover over suspect locations and missiles can be launched against alleged militants in Iraq and alleged al-Qaida and Taliban members in Afghanistan and in the border region of Pakistan.
The potential problem with the hacking was that insurgents, if they knew the locations being targeted, would be able to take evasive action.
A US source with knowledge of the programme today confirmed the report, first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, but said that the quality of the pictures seen by the insurgents would have been of limited value. The source said the pictures would have been fuzzy, making it near impossible to determine the location of a target in the deserts or mountains.
The US air force is responsible for drones in Iraq and Afghanistan and the CIA for those in Pakistan. The CIA ones are reported to have been encrypted while some of the air force ones have not.
The Pentagon had been aware of the problem for at least a decade but assumed the insurgents would not have had the technical knowledge to hack into the drones.
The drones, from being a relative novelty at the start of the decade, have become one of the favourite methods of the US military and the CIA in tracking and killing suspected insurgents. Their use in Pakistan is particularly controversial, in part because some Pakistanis see it as US infringement of the country's sovereignty but also because civilians are often hit.
Pakistan security officials said that a drone, assumed to be American, fired seven missiles today at a cave complex, a compound and a vehicle, killing 12.
Lieutenant Colonel Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman, asked about the hacking of drones, indicated the problem had been addressed. He said: "The department of defence constantly evaluates and seeks to improve the performance and security of our various ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] systems and platforms. As we identify shortfalls, we correct them as part of a continuous process of seeking to improve capabilities and security. As a matter of policy, we don't comment on specific vulnerabilities or intelligence issues."
The first the US apparently knew about the hacking was last year when they found video feeds from a drone on the laptop of a Shia militant allegedly backed by Iran. The US and Britain have both accused Iran for years of interfering in Iraq.
More laptops were found in the summer that suggested insurgents sharing the video feeds.
While the US is hinting that Iran, with its sophisticated technology, is the explanation, it could simply be that an Iraqi searching for a football game or other broadcast came across the signal.
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