DHS hacks 757 from gate

bike21 said:
How does one 'hack' something designed in the 70's and still has a six pack?
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The same way wherein if news stories said "figured out their password." instead of "hacked" people probably wouldn't leave their password on a post it note stuck to the monitor.
 
av8tr1 said:
Anyone want to chime in on what you would do if an engine suddenly spooled up on its own?
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It has been a memory item in everything I've flown and says "retard thrust levers until within limits" or some variation of that in the manufacturer' verbiage.

Still a far fetched idea. Similar to someone hacking my house and turning the oven on to bake 350. Sure they use the same source of electricity but that's where the connection stops.



Sent from my Startac using Tapatalk.
 
av8tr1 said:
The guy from a while back claims to have issued a command to one of the engines to "climb" which I assume really means increase thrust. Which would put the aircraft out of trim or worse. But I would imagine (hope) that would be a significant in air event leading to an land as soon as practicable situation. But I don't fly anything with auto throttles.

Anyone want to chime in on what you would do if an engine suddenly spooled up on its own?
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I'm too lazy to find the article about that, but I think a lot of experts came out and basically said that guy was full of crap.
And similarly, we generally hear about planes going haywire in some kind of report or bulletin. And lastly with that guy, if any of it was true he admitted to essentially hijacking an aircraft. He'd probably be locked up in Gitmo.
 
JordanD said:
I'm too lazy to find the article about that, but I think a lot of experts came out and basically said that guy was full of crap.
And similarly, we generally hear about planes going haywire in some kind of report or bulletin. And lastly with that guy, if any of it was true he admitted to essentially hijacking an aircraft. He'd probably be locked up in Gitmo.
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Well reportedly he is currently on the run from the FBI.
 
JordanD said:
Source?
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There was an article I found earlier with John McCafee defending him that talked about him being on the run but I can’t seem to find it again. I’ll see if I can dig it up from my history when I get back home tomorrow.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
I find this all really hard to believe. I'm no expert on 757 systems, but I can't imagine that there is any way to control any systems wirelessly. Perhaps you can view some system data through the ACARS, but not control anything.
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This stuff tends to be really complicated. It could be that a flaw in the onboard wifi allows code injection or something weird.

Assuming they're airgapped that shouldn't be a problem, but who knows what kind of vulnerability they've found. It could honestly be something as silly as spoofing GPS signals - or maybe a software flaw in the GPS allows you to inject code into the FMS. Hard telling not knowing but I wouldn't rule it out.

av8tr1 said:
There was an article I found earlier with John McCafee defending him that talked about him being on the run but I can’t seem to find it again. I’ll see if I can dig it up from my history when I get back home tomorrow.
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In all fairness though John Macafee is criminally insane.
 
"Hey you're on the Airbus' GoGo wifi at the gate, congrats! Enjoy a movie or something?"

Besides, if any system on the airplane actually used Gogo, unfortunately, it'd be offline for vast periods of time. So many legs, it's *brblrbrblbrbl* "Yeah, is the Wifi working?"
 
ppragman said:
This stuff tends to be really complicated. It could be that a flaw in the onboard wifi allows code injection or something weird.

Assuming they're airgapped that shouldn't be a problem, but who knows what kind of vulnerability they've found. It could honestly be something as silly as spoofing GPS signals - or maybe a software flaw in the GPS allows you to inject code into the FMS. Hard telling not knowing but I wouldn't rule it out.



In all fairness though John Macafee is criminally insane.
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Pro tip: There are NO, repeat, NO systems that use WiFi. FMS? It uses VHF. GPS? Why would it use WiFi?

Now, if the WiFi is on the same data bus as say, the autopilot, maybe it could, but as far as I’ve been taught, WiFi is a stand alone system. I should be able to pull the breaker with no degradation to aircraft systems.
 
You know any computer geek with an RF transmitter configured to the correct frequency, a laptop, and a chip on their shoulders could probably brick any CPU running a GPS system, right?

I don’t think it’d even be that difficult to trick the receiver into thinking bad guy’s laptop is another satellite in the constellation and at that point it’d be game on.
 
gotWXdagain said:
You know any computer geek with an RF transmitter configured to the correct frequency, a laptop, and a chip on their shoulders could probably brick any CPU running a GPS system, right?

I don’t think it’d even be that difficult to trick the receiver into thinking bad guy’s laptop is another satellite in the constellation and at that point it’d be game on.
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Brick the system? Nah. Knock gps offline? Absolutely. But in the case of the big iron with DME/DME and IRU update to the FMS probably all you lose is vnav and some of the really juicy RNP stuff.

As far as the second, remember what you learned about gps back in instrument...you’d have to spoof a whole lot more than one satellite for the system to do anything other than isolate out the bad data. Still doable, but not by spoofig one single satellite.
 
Roger Roger said:
Brick the system? Nah. Knock gps offline? Absolutely. But in the case of the big iron with DME/DME and IRU update to the FMS probably all you lose is vnav and some of the really juicy RNP stuff.

As far as the second, remember what you learned about gps back in instrument...you’d have to spoof a whole lot more than one satellite for the system to do anything other than isolate out the bad data. Still doable, but not by spoofig one single satellite.
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You don’t have to spoof a satellite to do the real damage, just spoof a satellite to open the door, and piggyback the real damaging code. And all your DME/DME/IRU and FMS wouldn’t mean squat if they all use the same CPU.
 
Roger Roger said:
Um...aircraft nav systems don’t generally work like that. But cool.
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Computers work like that, though. Anything that isn’t encrypted, hard wired between peripherals (think wired vs USB keyboard), and air-gapped between unsecured and essential networks is open to vulnerability.
 
gotWXdagain said:
Computers work like that, though. Anything that isn’t encrypted, hard wired between peripherals (think wired vs USB keyboard), and air-gapped between unsecured and essential networks is open to vulnerability.
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I think you’re overthinking what transport aircraft have in them. We may call it a computer, but it is a computer the way an abacus is technically a computer.
 
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