But they don’t provide an awful lot of detail:
http://www.defensedaily.com/dhs-led-team-demonstrates-commercial-aircraft-can-remotely-hacked/?fullview=1
I think cyber security will become more of a problem relatively soon in aviation. It is also the main reason why I don’t see pilotless planes being used on a wider scale anytime in the next 30 years. Too big of a risk.
They don’t provide any detail.
Let’s start with a list of ways to transfer data to an airliner.
Let’s make it easy and start when it is parked. Then you could – in theory – hack into anything which has wifi, so you could hack the crew Ipads. What else is there? Does an airliner have any GSM connectivity i.e. anything containing a terrestrial network SIM card?
Then look at what there is when in the air. Is ACARS physically connected to the avionics? It was in AF447, which is how they knew almost right away what probably happened, but that was for reporting (output). Is there an input channel on ACARS? Maybe it is possible to do some buffer overflow attack on ACARS – like the recent Stagefright media message attack on Android, un-preventably exploitable with a picture SMS – but that will work only if there is a physical channel. Then you have the satcomms on the engines, but that should be hard wired to only send engine parameters to Rolls Royce etc, with no way to control the engine.
Any other offers?
Peter wrote:
Any other offers?
The WiFi for the pax ? Don’t know if this airframe has internet as part of the IFE system enabled, but that must be a possible route.
Added: actually, this is either deliberate misinformation or really weird, as in the article he says, ‘they went in via RF’. Now I certainly am no transport aircraft specialist, but how do you get from the radios to the airplane’s systems ??? Any other RF route ?
Well, the pax wifi is certainly potentially hackable – google WPS attack. That method works on most wifi access points, and is an irritating issue on those from e.g. Cisco on which WPS cannot be disabled and which now have to be binned. But you can’t do it in the air, and unless configured by an idiot it won’t get you into the avionics. But I think we did this one before… there is likely a connection from the pax wifi to the aircraft systems, because the seat displays can display a moving map, so they are getting a location from the aircraft GPS. That may open a route in. I don’t suppose they have a Garmin 496 sitting somewhere, just for driving that 
So they managed to break into what? The entertainment system? They changed the cabin light remotely?
This most likely serves the purpose of getting funding for research (or even “research”).
Until they come up with details, I wouldn’t take this serious. Just PR that is serving self interest.
I don’t understand people who argue that airlines should be remotely controlled (or controllable) to prevent hijacking. The only effect would be that hijackers won’t even need to be on the aircraft.
Except for a back door in ACARS (via a malformed message) I can’t see an airliner having any vulnerability when airborne.
How exactly can one send a message to an airliner via ACARS? Presumably there is an “address” of some kind?
The only other possibility is some other satcomm system with a data connection to the aircraft systems. I know we have lots of airline pilots here
The engine monitoring system (Inmarsat usually, sending data to the engine maker) could not be used to control the engine – unless the capability was specifically designed-in, and keeping that secret would need to be at the very highest imaginable level of “national security”; IMHO so many people would need to know about it that they would never be able to keep it secret. It would be roughly on the level of faking the moon landings.
