Who thought that having any communication path from the passenger entertainment system to flight control was a good idea?
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33650491
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9942647
In any case, for bad dudes that are pursuing you when people aren’t around, being able to shut down your car is just as bad as being able to control it.
A Tesla is the perfect example. The fact that it has self-driving---I mean, "assisted cruise control"---naturally means a computer can take over the controls entirely.
"Miller and Valasek’s full arsenal includes functions that at lower speeds fully kill the engine, abruptly engage the brakes, or disable them altogether. The most disturbing maneuver came when they cut the Jeep's brakes, leaving me frantically pumping the pedal as the 2-ton SUV slid uncontrollably into a ditch. The researchers say they're working on perfecting their steering control—for now they can only hijack the wheel when the Jeep is in reverse. Their hack enables surveillance too: They can track a targeted Jeep's GPS coordinates, measure its speed, and even drop pins on a map to trace its route."[1]
The wheel control only working in reverse kind of makes sense. They're probably using some kind of self-park feature to control the wheel, and some engineer (sensibly) put in some kind of interlock to prevent the wheel from moving on its own when travelling at speed.
The wording of the article implies that these particular attacks only work when the car is travelling at low speed, but earlier in the article they did mention that they could (and did!) throw the transmission into neutral while the Jeep was driving on the highway. The driver was unable to recover without turning the car off and back on again.
In a followup a year later, they showed that they were able to do these attacks at any speed, including turning the steering wheel.[2]
[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...
[2] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/jeep-hackers-return-high-speed...
Would you agree that this logical boundary should be physically enforced? Such as an opto-isolator?
They probably do something to that effect
I have seen things. Terrible things.
Secure: The network that connects and controls the airplane. Absolutely only essential things allowed on, and if possible isolated using mathematically proven secure vlan/isolation techniques.
"Employee": pilots, crew, etc. This is more just a distinct network for corporate operations security.
"Customer": Still try to keep this one secure so that virus and just don't spread, but this is the 'DMZ' area.
Communication from the secure network should be outbound only, and might best be done over a fixed rate serial data connection of some sort.
The modern version might be to configure a point to point network link on a CDMA based system and just disconnect the secure side's RX path entirely. Then you just export the data blind via UDP with like 10X redundancy.
Instead we got MCAS which was messing with autotrim signals and escaped scrutiny.
A trivial use case which requires write access to the CAN bus is the navigation system informing cruise control of an upcoming hill.
Equally trivial would be the seat position memory or profiles being applied through the main touchscreen.
(I work for a company that is developing infotainment systmes)
They have been relaxed since then, but all current commercial jetliners would stay comfortably within both limits.
Incidentally, my GPS watch (Garmin) was working last time I was on a plane. It was bang on 700kph the whole time IIRC.
Also industries have cultures, and dunning-kruger often applies outside their core domains.
For example: I did some work with Mercedes (no insult to them -- I've happily owned several of their cars). They were "real" engineers; the "schnook" of the door when it shut. The brake-by-wire folks modeled everything in Matlab, developed multiple implementations, But the entertainment system? It's not "real" engineering, so is typically subbed out to a canonical or cheapest bidder based on a powerpoint bullet list. The result: really really safe vehicle, but the user's actual experience (outside the driving) is not encouraging.
Same issue with a BMW I had: ECU always kept the pollution within spec; the car always started instantly when I turned the key no matter the temperature or environment, but the seats and windows would move randomly.
And we all suffer from this: when I worked on power plants I was (and remain) horrified by the shitshow that is SCADA and the HMI infrastructure many of the other "absurd" things I saw, well, some patient people would show me what an idiot I was and that there were very good reasons for doing things that looked to an outsider like headstands.
It's hard to implement strict one-way communications -- usually you at least need some kind of ACK for reliable transmission.
Put all those together with a vulnerability in the middle, and you have an attack.
Also, makes upgrades to new processors and better displays easier. Honestly, with an OLED screen, if there was a good mount on the back of the headrest, I'd rather watch movies on my screen.