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Comment by naikrovek | Hacker News Reader

the airline industry is nowhere nearly as stupid as the software industry with things like this.

the communication between plane and wifi/entertainment system, if there is any, is almost certainly one-way. likely, the wifi system providing this info is receiving data from the flight systems and repeating it or transforming it a bit and providing that.

it would not surprise me at all if the flight attendants have to program everything about the flight into the system prior to departure each flight, and there is no communication from the aircraft at all.

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"The computer network in the Dreamliner's passenger compartment, designed to give passengers in-flight internet access, is connected to the plane's control, navigation and communication systems, an FAA report reveals." [1]

(I guess there's some kind of firewall, but we know that those are not always perfect)

[1] https://www.wired.com/2008/01/dreamliner-security/

Not a problem as long as you reboot your Dreamliner every once in a while: https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycl...

IIRC the in-flight infotainment systems are entirely separate from the avionics control systems at the data layer. I recall being told that in some cases even the flight status is actually pulled from a 3p api service rather than hooked into the onboard avionics.

There could be some fuckery via shared power or other non-data systems but that’s probably beyond someone sitting in a seat with standard laptop hardware.

If the latter was true, then "wheelWeightState" (and others) would not work. But, they do work.

The weight-on-wheels switch reports its in-the-air status over ADSB. It errs in the direction of assuming in-the-air, which was implicated in a near miss on the ground in 2020 between two Air Canada flights[1][2]

1: https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/aviation/2020/A20...

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7nG6gJqsU

Not necessarily. All this could be reported up to airline HQ through the satellite link and then the IFE/customer WiFi could be downloading it again to serve locally.

That would prevent any need for direct connection between the systems.

Is that how it works? I doubt it. But it could be done.

Might be one way, but that doesn't mean you can't DDoS it (by accident or otherwise).

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