Hacking into an aircraft computer system

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Pop_Rivit

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Now that's comforting.

Originally Posted By: From Article
A computer security expert hacked into a plane's in-flight entertainment system and made it briefly fly sideways by telling one of the engines to go into climb mode.


Originally Posted By: From Article
According to the document, in an interview on Feb. 13, 2015, Roberts told agents he had hacked into in-flight entertainment centers on Boeing 737s, 757s and Airbus A-320 aircraft "15 to 20 times."

From there, Roberts was able to hack into the plane's IFE system using default IDs and passwords.



Default IDs? Default passwords? That was the first thing anyone with an ounce of intelligence would change back in my programming days. Here it is 2015 and something as complex and potentially vulnerable as a jumbo jet is hacked using default IDs and passwords?

Airliners Hacked
 
Sensationalism here, but if this were a real issue, the FAA/Boeing would have introduced an Airworthiness Directive around these issues. Having said that, at least with respect to the 737, there is no evidence that the airplane's avionics and any of the IFE are, at all, inter-related or even connected.

As for IFE, the Panasonic ex2, the most common model out there, is literally just Linux running on a network of PC's spread throughout the aircraft. No different than you might have in a college's computer lab. When it crashes or boots up in certain configurations, you can literally see all the tell-tale signs of it being run on the Linux kernel. I doubt the designers hardened its architecture extensively against denial-of-service attacks, which could be inserted by someone with access to the Ethernet network, but at worst, its just IFE. A customer service concern, but hardly a safety of flight issue.
 
This reminds me of the Die Hard movie where the terrorists were able reprogram the altimeters so that the pilot thought he was higher than he actually was. In the movie, several of the planes slammed into the runway.
 
Hacking the IFE would be like hacking into your 1980's stereo system's cassette deck. These things are stand-alone, hardwired, and cover three distinct zones througout the cabin. They're not hooked to anything that has to do with 'Safety of Flight'.

Heck, half the time you get on a plane the darned things don't work. You ask the stew to reboot your zone and get it up and running. There's a big master controller in the closet next to where they hang your jacket in the first class cabin that controls the whole thing.

But sure,, I bet that guy was throttling the engines and making the landing gear doors open and close while they were cruising at 30,000ft. He was probably making the little red light on the belly of the plane flash too. I wonder if he also controlled the chemtrail nozzles?
 
Vandalized the IFE box? Yeah, I can believe that.

Made the engines respond? Nope. Completely bogus.

The IFE on a 757 isn't connected to anything else. There is a Thrust Management Computer, it's connected to the Flight Management Computer. But they're not connected to anything else and they're not connected to IFE, which was added 20+ years after the airplane was built.

This guy has delusions of grandeur. The arrests are for tampering with expensive equipment, not because his claims are true.
 
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Originally Posted By: sicko
Why are the plane's operations and the entertainment system even running on the same network?


They're not.
 
Originally Posted By: 4wheeldog
Bogus......But it does not rise to the level of urban legend. Just a bogus tale, which means it will probably show up on FOX news.

CNN broke the story and Al Jazerra, RT, and USA Today are currently running with it, but nice try.....
 
Nope, not even remotely possible.

The only connection an entertainment system has to the aircraft is a circuit breaker. It's otherwise a stand-alone system. In the same tube, but not connected.
 
Originally Posted By: MolaKule
Is that a joke?

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/forums/27/1/Aviation


I guess the next time my mower gets stolen ill put it in the small engine section.
smile.gif
 
Originally Posted By: Astro14
Vandalized the IFE box? Yeah, I can believe that.

Made the engines respond? Nope. Completely bogus.

The IFE on a 757 isn't connected to anything else. There is a Thrust Management Computer, it's connected to the Flight Management Computer. But they're not connected to anything else and they're not connected to IFE, which was added 20+ years after the airplane was built.

This guy has delusions of grandeur. The arrests are for tampering with expensive equipment, not because his claims are true.


Interesting. There are a lot of people, including a number of government agencies including the watchdog group Government Accountability Office, the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI that seem to think differently than you do.

Even the search warrant claims that he did what he said. On Pages 13 and 14 it spells out what the FBI thought he did.

Page 16 of the warrant goes so far as to state that

Originally Posted By: From Warrant
he had been able to and did use special equipment in his possession to "hack" into the IFE systems on aircraft previously and had claimed that he had connected to other systems on the aircraft network; and (4) that agents and technical specialists with the FBI believed that he may have just done that again or attempted to do so using the equipment then in his possession as witnessed by the FBI.
 
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit

Interesting. There are a lot of people, including a number of government agencies including the watchdog group Government Accountability Office, the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI that seem to think differently than you do.

Even the search warrant claims that he did what he said.


Yea, I saw that. I know above posters are knowledgeable, but would I bet against him not doing what he said he did?? Or saying it another way would I want to be flying in that plane with him trying to crash the plane??? No way!!!
 
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Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
Interesting. There are a lot of people, including a number of government agencies including the watchdog group Government Accountability Office, the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI that seem to think differently than you do.


If they really did, every IFE system on every plane flying in and out of America would have been disabled by now.

And it sounds completely bogus to me, too. The IFE can read information from the avionics (e.g. position, for the map display), but has no legitimate way to send messages back.
 
Originally Posted By: emg

And it sounds completely bogus to me, too. The IFE can read information from the avionics (e.g. position, for the map display), but has no legitimate way to send messages back.


I'm pretty sure those systems can't even do that, ie: talk to the plane's FMS. For instance, a certain airline in Canada operates early-build A320s without GPS navigation capability, yet the IFE uses GPS for the moving map, groundspeed calculation, etc. So the GPS feeding such is built into the IFE, operates independently of the aircraft's avionics entirely, and the flight attendants have to key in the destination airport when booting the IFE up. As another poster put it, the only interface between the IFE and the rest of the aircraft is literally an electric circuit breaker.
 
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