Comment by agar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by agar | Hacker News Reader

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This was probably a response to a hack that occurred in 2014. It wouldn't surprise me if it was mandated by the FAA or similar regulatory body.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/17/us/fbi-hacker-flight-computer...

> During FBI interviews in February and March, the document says, Roberts told investigators he hacked into in-flight entertainment systems aboard aircraft. He claimed to have done so 15 to 20 times from 2011 to 2014.

> He also said, according to the document, that once he had hacked into the systems and then overwrote code, enabling him to issue a “CLB,” or climb, command.

> “He stated that he thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb resulting in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of these flights,” the document says.

I doubt it. You can bring a "rooted" linux laptop onto the plane and it works, so banning rooted phones from inflight WiFi would be a little silly.

I am interested in the linked story, but it's very odd that a passenger wifi network would be cross-connected with flight controls.

That the network on a non-wifi seatback entertainment system could be is a little more believable, but I'm still curious how it wouldn't have resulted in an extended grounding of all aircraft of that type if it were true. There was no grounding, or order to modify that system following his twitter posts and subsequent arrest.

Edit: If you search around for what happened after the incident described above, it seems pretty clear he did not send any commands to flight systems. He seems knowledgeable about them, but seems to perhaps have been caught out talking about a theoretical scenario as if it happened. He wasn't charged, and as mentioned, no actions were taken to change anything. I suspect the networks are properly isolated.

I hate when apps lock out rooted Android phones for "security purposes" when it's so simple to get around it by just directly accessing the API or spoofing. It's even dumber when the app/website can be accessed through a laptop which is much more permissive than a rooted phone. I've never heard a reason for why companies do this.

I’ve worked with Chris. I wouldn’t believe a word out of his mouth.

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