Hacker told FBI he made plane fly sideways after cracking entertainment system

http://aptn.ca/news/2015/05/15/hacker-told-f-b-made-plane-fly-sideways-cracking-entertainment-system/

by johnnycarcin • 11 years ago

61 61 11 years ago

Another article with some additional follow-up: http://www.wired.com/2015/05/feds-say-banned-researcher-comm...

dang• 11 years ago

It was discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554841. The story seems to be of greater interest than that thread satisfied, so perhaps we won't bury this one as a duplicate.

maerF0x0• 11 years ago

seems to me united wanted to be hacked: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/Contact/bugbounty.a...

jauer• 11 years ago

If the allegations are true, he deserves prison, for reckless endangerment more than computer trespass.

There's no excuse for risking the lives of passengers and crew.

efnx5• 11 years ago

Unless he's trying to raise awareness and force the manufacturer to fix their defective, dangerous aircraft.

meowface• 11 years ago

What? That's still not an excuse to attempt it on a live passenger plane in the air. You're potentially endangering not only your life but the lives of hundreds of strangers.

In an empty plane you're piloting alone, or a simulation, sure, but there's clearly a non-zero chance that the navigation hijacking could disrupt the plane enough to force an emergency landing or even cause it to crash. Even if you think you know what you're doing, there could be lots of unintended side effects from forcing the plane to make certain maneuvers.

UnoriginalGuy• 11 years ago

That isn't a reasonable excuse for endangering people's lives. If he actually altered the engine output even 1% he belongs in jail. It is as simple as that.

Looking at flight information, seeing nearby aircrafts, etc are not dangerous and they provide "proof of concept." Heck he could even turn on and off the navigation lights as proof that he can "control the aircraft" without directly endangering anyone.

I am sceptical like other people here that he actually altered the engine output from the entertainment system network. If he did then that would both be a gross lapse in basic aircraft security and he actually deserves some level of legal recourse for endangering other passenger's life, as well as thanks for exposing the vulnerability.

I liken it to hacking into a car and causing the acceleration pedal to stick on momentarily when you change radio stations. It would definitely alert people to the problem, but how many lives have been endangered to alert people? In particular if he made a mistake and instead of having it stick for 1 sec he did 10 sec? Is it right to put other people's lives in the hands of his experiments? They didn't sign up to be his guinea pigs.

ghshephard2• 11 years ago

That is a completely invalid statement. Saying that you are willing to risk the lives of everyone on a plane, potentially killing all of them, just to demonstrate that it's theoretically possible to bring a plane down, is akin to putting a washing machine on the railroad tracks, just to demonstrate it's possible to de-rail a passenger train.

This is the sort of testing that should be done on planes without passengers.

verelo• 11 years ago

I would be very surprised and disappointed if there is any connection between flight systems and the entertainment system. As someone holds a private pilot license, I feel like the first thing that you're taught is about the various systems and how they are separated physically. It feels shocking that the entertainment system would even be on the same network.

Having said that, I once worked with a guy who used to work for Boeing. Given the work he produced while we worked together, nothing would surprise me.

I hope this just turns out to be a vocal series of lies, but I also hope it's fully investigated.

unoti• 11 years ago

Even the Battlestar Galactica had a ban on netowrk connectivity of the computer systems!

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/54734/making-sense-...

flexd• 11 years ago

Luckily for us; there is a low risk of Cylons for the foreseeable future!

mirimir2• 11 years ago

He bragged about his hacking skills to the FBI? Really?

But maybe they asked him point blank if he had ever pwned a real plane in flight. And he didn't didn't want to risk lying to an FBI agent. Tough call.

neurotech15• 11 years ago

Connecting his laptop to an Ethernet port (not intended for passenger use) is enough for the FBI to consider prosecuting him, even if he didn't actually do anything else.

asadlionpk• 11 years ago

I think I have seen ethernet ports intended for passenger's use in some airlines.

jack9• 11 years ago

Only if you can actually access the flight systems from the entertainment console, which you can't. We would have already heard of a massive undertaking of securing against this vulnerability on every 747, which didn't happen. Either the airlines have been negligent or the FBI has made up a story for a fishing expedition (most likely).

lawnchair_larry2• 11 years ago

You'll notice that interview with the FBI happened in February, after he gave a talk on airplane security, and this incident was in May. Apparently, whatever he said during that interview wasn't enough to get him in any trouble.

mirimir2• 11 years ago

Right, but that helped to justify the warrant. Even if he's never charged, he's lost a bunch of gear. Even if he gets it back, it will not be trustable. And any plaintext information therein may hurt him.

rdtsc• 11 years ago

I can't believe Boeing would connect the entertainment system to the avionics system.

But the article mentions this:

""" After news broke about a report from the Government Accountability Office revealing that passenger Wi-Fi networks on some Boeing and Airbus planes could allow an attacker to gain access to avionics systems and commandeer a flight, """

Anyone could find that report? I see mention about the report on other news sites, but not the report itself.

EDIT: I think I found the report:

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-370

teraflop• 11 years ago

Yeah, that report was widely cited as saying that Wi-Fi and avionics systems were connected, but as far as I can tell, it says nothing of the sort. The only point at which it mentions Boeing or Airbus at all is in the context of the FAA issuing "Special Conditions" requiring them to restrict network connectivity, and it doesn't make any reference whatsoever to Wi-Fi.

It looks to me like Wired literally made the whole thing up and a bunch of other sites took it as gospel.

userbinator2• 11 years ago

It's oft-repeated that avionics and other non-flight-critical systems like IFE are isolated from each other, so...

- If he was just lying, this must be one of the stupidest publicity stunts I've seen, and planes are still as resistant to hacking as they've always been.

- If he was telling the truth, there could be some serious effects and perhaps it was his way of imparting momentum to finally fix the vulnerabilities that he claims have been around for years; if that were the case, whatever happens to him, his "sacrifice" could even be considered heroic.

I'd really like to believe it's the former, but something about the latter still feels plausible.

Roberts is the founder of One World Labs

Incidentally, not to be confused with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneworld

na85• 11 years ago

It likely depends heavily on which aircraft we're talking about. The new 787 is highly computerized. It would not surprise me to learn everything is on the same network and only segmented in software.

sukilot• 11 years ago

The FAA would be deeply surprised that such a thing evaded their notice, if true.

neurotech15• 11 years ago

The 787 uses multiple isolated networks.

The In-Flight Entertainment network is regular Ethernet, and Flight Management System is a different format (ARINC 664/AFDX) which provides deterministic real-time connectivity.

There is a device called a Network Extension Device (NED) which is a one-way gateway between the FMS and the IFE for showing the progress of the flight to passengers.

redwards510• 11 years ago

I believe this is a big misunderstanding that has snowballed recently. I think what he actually claimed was that he did all of these outrageous stunts in a network simulation that he had, not a live aircraft. That is why he has not been arrested. He wants publicity for the issue of security of aircraft computers and that's why he isn't rushing to squash these "I made the airplane do a barrel roll" stories.

What's better for raising consciousness about a potentially fatal flaw that by making people think that lives were at risk when they weren't?

dennisnedry2• 11 years ago

Also the idea that the plane went "sideways" could have been a weird coincidence. Maybe they went through turbulence when he allegedly sent the command?

matmann20012• 11 years ago

Planes don't even move sideways.

Gracana• 11 years ago

I think what he actually claimed was that he did all of these outrageous stunts in a network simulation that he had, not a live aircraft.

Page 14 (pdf page 15) of the investigation report describes evidence of seat electronics box tampering at the location where Chris Roberts sat when he tweeted about hacking the plane. It may be a coincidence (a lot of wear-and-tear on old aircraft could be described as "evidence of tampering" if you wanted to look at it that way), but the FBI doesn't seem to think so.

lawnchair_larry2• 11 years ago

Simple explanation. He did plug in to the system. He did not issue commands against a live system, but did look around. The actual manipulation occurred offline in a test environment at a different time and place.

The extravagant claims were maliciously taken out of context by the agent in order to secure whatever he wanted from a judge, trump up charges, and making it sound as if there was some dire urgency to expedite due process and rational thought.

I don't actually know anything about this case, but have seen this happen with virtually every warrant document or indictment related to computer "crime". They're an adversarial exercise in sales to further the author's agenda, not an impartial document aimed at ensuring justice.

Now his lawyer is telling him to STFU, but he's being mischaracterized in the court of public opinion.

verystealthy5• 11 years ago

It's important to put things to the test, but I tend to listed to people who are actually qualified and know what they're talking about. Even that RenderMan talk at DEFCON 20 came with a bunch of caveats. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, the TL;DW version is: Boeing and Airbus are not stupid, a 787 is not a D-Link wireless router and you pretty much can't get to the flight controls from the in-flight entertainment system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy3nXXZgqmg

neurotech15• 11 years ago

As explained in the linked video above (from DEFCON 22), there is a device called a Network Extension Device (NED) which is a one-way gateway between the FMS and the IFE for showing the progress of the flight to passengers.

verystealthy5• 11 years ago

Yeah, but I think that the main message is that there are pilots in the cockpit who can easily override any weird input. Even if it is theoretically possible (hey, you never know, right?) to impersonate avionics and mess up with the FMS/ECU/EICAS, there's no such thing as a pilot going "holy crap! the plane is going sideways and there's nothing I can do!". I'm pretty comfortable calling this whole "hacking the engines from the in-flight entertainment system" fiction.

x00542• 11 years ago

Why on earth would you need more than a simple one way API between the FMS and IFE to be able to show inflight progress. For that matter, why would it be more complicated than a simple serial cable with just the O pin on the FMS side, and just the I pin on the IFE side to feed information at regular intervals to the IFE. I have no idea how exactly the systems are setup, but off the top of my head I can come up with several VERY simple methods of insuring that the communication between the FMS and IFE is in deed unidirectional. If this story is true, I would be highly disappointed in Boeing!

DanBC• 11 years ago

If true I'm kind of surprised that "they" have not banned all computers from planes. It only took one incompetent shoe-bomber to cause many fliers to have to remove their shoes for a decade.

vidarh2• 11 years ago

You should have seen the screener at Gatwick that almost freaked out a few years ago when my then 3 year old son had to send his shoes through and he could see electronics in the heel.

They were the kind of shoes that lit up when he put his feet down, and the guy had clearly not seen them before - he looked at the other screeners with this terrified look on his face. Thankfully one of them reassured him that it was safe quickly enough.

Never mind that I regularly forget water bottles and/or electronics in my carry on that they either never spot or can't be bothered to do anything about.

tfe• 11 years ago

I wonder why they didn't just track down the pilots of that flight and ask if they had an uncommanded increase in thrust on one engine.

digdigdag• 11 years ago

None of this really adds up for me. The in-flight entertainment system should run completely separate from the RTOS that governs thrust, navigation, control surfaces, etc. I highly doubt these mission-critical systems would somehow be directly connected to the back-seat infotainment systems that regularly crash after a few flicks of the finger.

twblalock• 11 years ago

If this is really true, it takes some balls to push code to the system that is running the plane that you yourself are flying in.

I mean, I've released bugs to production before, but they have never put my life at risk...

dennisnedry2• 11 years ago

Or...maybe he's just THAT confident. Nah, I chalk that up to a "who would be THAT dumb to allow plane controls through the entertainment system".

whyenot• 11 years ago

have never put my life at risk...

If true, he also risked the lives of everyone else on that plane. That's not ballsy, it's selfish and dangerous. If proven true, what he needs is a "timeout" at one of our country's many penal institutions.

verystealthy5• 11 years ago

Airliners are not a Heroku dyno that you can "push code" into. There aren't APIs you can call, pull requests or Docker containers. We're not talking about a webserver or a couple of rails apps. We're talking about stuff being physically separated, non TCP, non IP, non Ethernet, uni-directional connectivity. Your OSI model doesn't apply here. Your API command list doesn't apply here. Your very notion of networking doesn't apply here. This is not about releasing early and iterating. We're talking about systems with a lot of redundancy and actual physical backups where efficiency is not an issue. The devops mentality does not work in this case.

deepnet• 11 years ago

The FBI are liars and their informants are liars.

The real secret the security services are trying to hide is their complete ineffectiveness, total waste of money and hijacking for political and public manipulation.

I really don't believe any of this piddling feargeddon media manipulation nonsense - spies are jerks.

Reprinting propaganda does not count as journalism or news.

wsha• 11 years ago

Whether or not the allegations are true (as most people are questioning here), this article is really poorly researched. There's no indication that any attempt was made to get Roberts' side of the story or to check with any other security researcher about the plausibility of the accusations.

Several people have suggested that Roberts' goal is to raise awareness about airplane safety, so perhaps he actually wanted the article published like this even if inaccurate, though it still reflects poorly on the author.

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

Interesting if true, it will once again put wind behind the push to get Professional Engineer status for software engineers.

Hacker told FBI he made plane fly sideways after cracking entertainment system

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