Hacked ATC radio...

In most countries, you risk spending several years in prison if you were to disrupt an airport like that and they find you. In this case:

According to Australia’s Aviation Transport Act, interfering with aircraft navigation facilities or “putting the safety of an aircraft at risk by communicating false information” are in the same class of offence as taking control of an aircraft, damaging an aircraft or planting a dangerous item onboard.

And with VDF, you already get a good idea of the general direction that such transmissions come from, as well as some information from the voice (male/female, approximate age, maybe something about the personality). So I think there is a high chance to get caught, too. That should deter most people with half a brain. Of course, we can see criminals with less than half a brain acting all the time and being sentenced.

But I don’t think you need to make every system “hack-proof”. It is enough to make it illegal, put up some rules and rely on most sensible people following the rules. Then go after the rest. Please don’t make us change all our radios again…

I wouldn’t even call this hacking. You can also take any weapon and attack someone on the streets just because you can – but why would you?

This went on around here a few years ago. Bogus clearances to land, etc. IIRC, most if not all of the radio calls were fairly obviously bogus to the airline crews.

it is hard to believe that aviation communication is still using unencrypted AM radio…

I think every electronics engineer, upon embarking on a PPL, ends up posting in aviation forums asking this question – because it is so obvious

Obviously the answer is that nobody can change the present system.

But I think effective key management would be virtually impossible, due to the large number of participants, with most of them being from “dodgy” countries.

What sort of security is there on the digital systems – not sure of the name – whereby ATC can send commands to the crew for them to action, as text messages?

Rwy20 wrote:

Please don’t make us change all our radios again…

I have said it before, pilots are often their own worst enemy

lenthamen wrote:

In today’s world where security is a hot item, and even Whatsapp conversations are end-to-end encrypted, it is hard to believe that aviation communication is still using unencrypted AM radio…

Considering how (in)frequently this happens and that — to the best of my knowledge — it has never caused an accident, I don’t see why we should need to invest in even more new equipment to address a negligible risk. 8.33 kHz was bad enough.

lenthamen wrote:

it is hard to believe that aviation communication is still using unencrypted AM radio…

Not really. AM radio works and it’s simple to implement, and moving to an encrypted digital system requires absolutely everyone in the world change their radios (AGAIN!) at enormous cost. It’s just like POTS (plain old telephone service) still works with a rotary dial telephone from 50 years ago.

In reality problems with unauthorized people broadcasting on aviation frequencies is virtually nil. And you can bet any encrypted system implemented will have flaws, which means we get to change all our radios, but in reality the new ones won’t be any more secure because of the extreme difficulty of fixing flaws once the system is installed all over the world.

Rwy20 wrote:

I wouldn’t even call this hacking.

That was my first thought too when I read this yesterday in some online newspaper. “Hacking” would be if the guy actually tampered with the wiring (“Die Harder” style) and used the control tower’s radio equipment for his transmissions, cutting out the tower crew entirely.

But he’s just an idiot with a hand held radio sitting in his car on the perimeter road of the airport. Every transmission from the tower will easily overpower his little radio. The controllers can cancel his bogus landing clearances any time. This is not the first time this happens. I remember many NOTAMs warning of false transmissions. Some years ago there was a guy in the Cologne/Düsseldorf area who did this for months. They never caught him because he transmitted while driving on one of the many motorways between those cities. I guess it got boring for himself after some time. Or he just found himself another hobby like molesting little children at the schoolyard.

Peter wrote:

But I think effective key management would be virtually impossible, due to the large number of participants, with most of them being from “dodgy” countries.

What you need is a signature as the primary concern is authenticity (so the problem is contained to the “dodgy countries”). CPDLC supports encryption and signatures but that’s about as much as I can say about it.

They could have switched to digital instead of (or when) going to 8.33 but they haven’t (the advantages, including security ones, were known). Americans were working on digital voice (VDL mode 3) years ago. I’m not expecting this change anytime soon.

alioth wrote:

And you can bet any encrypted system implemented will have flaws, which means we get to change all our radios, but in reality the new ones won’t be any more secure because of the extreme difficulty of fixing flaws once the system is installed all over the world.

The theoretical foundation should be sound for years if competent people do it. Implementation is usually the problem. And that is more manageable. In all likelihood a fix would involve a firmware update. It does, however, potentially open a link into the aircraft’s systems (there is more at stake than just clearance spoofing).

Just come down hard on it. I read Australian law can give 20 years prison for this. I say do it.