Boeing 757 Testing Shows Airplanes Vulnerable to Hacking, DHS Says

I fly A330-340 and with current popular models like 320 or 737 the flight computers are not directly conected to any network. They are conected to the acars a messaging computer (with a very limited protocol) that we use to ask for weather, company messages like how many wheel chairs we have onboard , delay expected , etc... There is also the CPDLC that it's used to send messages to control in the oceanic zones (but is going to be implemented for all flights) Both systems can receive basic flight plan data that we can accept and include in our flight computers (like new way points, wind speeds, etc..) but I guess the comunication protocol is so basic that no mayor owning can happen.

This systems are connected via vhf data channels (dedicated ground stations), or satellite data link.

Even if they manage to crash the flight computer (they sometimes crash on their own) you only have to take manual control and reset everything. But they could never gain control of the autopilot or anything of that kind. They can only (if very very good) manage to impersonate ground controllers, but we are checking via radio comms all the time, so if something doesn't make sense we just have to call to check.

The latest models have more integrated computer systems, like you can open a valve using a trackball in the cockpit (like in the flight simulator) But I don't think they have more connection to the exterior world than older models.

Even wifi access via the inflight entertainment system is going to find a very limited number of ports or protocols to attack.

It's not something that makes even the top 100 things we worry about. We worry more about birds or drones, or dogs running in the runway.

This could change if they keep trying to make more "interactive" the newer models though.

This seems like an egregiously fearmongering article. Notice that it never actually says what the hackers accomplished, what controls they were able to access, or what impact it would have. All it says is they they accomplished "a penetration", and a really vague sentence saying "you can guess what we did" (aka: we want people to assume the worst even though that may not be the case).

We've known for awhile that avionic systems are vulnerable. Anyone working in the cyber space that has half a brain will tell you that any system can be hacked, and there's no reason to think that airplanes are the exception.

However, there's no reason to believe that any airplanes are currently in any danger. Modern aircraft do not have any systems that allow "remote control" of the aircraft. It's not like a hacker could use an RF penetration to shut down engines or cause a plane to crash into a mountain. The worst I can imagine them doing is confusing the navigation system or impersonating air traffic controllers, but at that point the pilots in the cockpit would still be able to safely fly the plane without issue.

The 757 flight controls can be physically disconnected from the electronic controls by the pilot. The flight controls are mechanically connected by steel cables to the hydraulic actuators on the control surfaces.

Unless that has changed since the airplane was designed in the early 80's, the pilot should be able to regain control despite the electronics going berserk. Hydraulic power is required to fly, but not electronics.

Source: I worked on 757 flight controls back around 1980.

Martin Strohmeier's PhD thesis "Security in Next Generation Air Traffic Communication Networks" is pretty sobering reading and goes into a lot of detail. http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/security-air-traffic.pdf

For example, you don't even need to exploit any systems to cause chaos. You could create a lot of trouble in busy airspace by creating endless TCAS RAs from ghost planes, as the transponders TCAS uses to calculate collision avoidance are not authenticated.

As a suspicion based on what little information is contained in the article, I'd bet that they were messing with ACARS to some degree. This is something you could easily do with off-the-shelf SDR hardware, and the protocol itself has no inherent security features.

As other posters have noted, this could mess with FMS flight plans as well as other logistics (which could be significant from an operational standpoint), but for actual safety of flight it's probably a non-issue.

This isn't new by any means: http://www.aviationtoday.com/2006/06/01/securing-acars-data-...

This actually blow my mind. Here's the gist:

The issue was found last year but the response of "experts" was that it was known issue? But then turns out pilots didn't know about this. To top it, there is no concept of patching and cost of change per line is $1 million along and will take years to implement.

Such critical infrastructure but so poorly maintained. I wonder what is the excuse?

Here’s where I come off as ass, but what do you expect? These are complex systems with millions of moving parts and millions of lines of code. The chances of anyone ever being able to fully secure all systems (physical and virtual) is literally zero.

Combined with truly awe inspiring lifespans (how many coders truly have systems running mostly unmodified thirty years later?) this means that many many defects and vulnerabilities will be discovered over the lifespan of an aircraft.

Add in avionics and flight control upgrades designed to interface with legacy controls, and I consider it a miracle these amazing machines are as secure as they are.

It’s a testament to the engineering that goes into these machines that more stuff isn’t found or (god forbid) actively exploited.

A major hack like this, in which all planes or even a large percentage of them were vulnerable, could severely constrict the world economy and lead to a stock market crash. It is basically a matter of when, not if that happens.

Aircraft are an interesting case where nobody except state actors can really afford to evaluate their security.

White hats and grey hats know the whole area is a minefield, and even a whiff of impropriety can bring the heel of the law down upon you. Airlines and aircraft makers both have a financial conflict of interests, discovering vulnerabilities and deploying fixes in existing aircraft could cost millions.

For NEW aircraft designs there is an incentive to discover and mitigate potential issues, but given aircraft's shelf life that might not be good enough over the long haul.

What can be done? I guess schemes like this one, that bring industry experts together with a real working aircraft and letting them try. But for political reasons even schemes like this could be unpopular if Boeing's shares take a hit and aircraft are grounded for service.

How embarrassing that a bumbling government agency was able to find security vulnerabilities in a multi billion dollar corporation's product.