Drones could be targeted by hackers as a means of attacking other computer systems, according to warnings from security firm Seworks.

Dongcheol Hong, CTO and director at the company, showed the Code Blue cybersecurity conference in Tokyo how a drone could be hijacked, infecting the robot with malware from both a smartphone app and another drone.

"Recently, drone systems are rapidly taking over markets around the world, and drone systems are also made and developed rapidly as well," Hong wrote in the preamble to his talk.

"I am going to demonstrate you how to ultimately compromise a drone by using drone’s convenient features. My malware, also known as HSDrone, enables itself to spread from one device to an another and takes over privileges to compromise and control them."

Code Blue took place on December 18-19, attracting 400 people from the cybersecurity industry, including one who participated by drone, according to Suguru Ishimaru of security firm Kaspersky Lab which sponsored the conference.