Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost
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Ture but . . .
"Yes I know who Bruce Schneier is, and yes I agree with the general statement that nothing is unhackable given enough time.
However the basic sanity test of viability still very much puts WiFi / remote control of a Boeing 777 firmly into the Hollywood fiction category. I doubt Mr Schneier would disagree with me there."
mixture, what you say here is true however, a hacker doesn't have to take control of the aircraft to cause an incident.
They could just target specific components of the system (for example disable comms) and cause an accident without actually trying to fly the aircraft.
However the basic sanity test of viability still very much puts WiFi / remote control of a Boeing 777 firmly into the Hollywood fiction category. I doubt Mr Schneier would disagree with me there."
mixture, what you say here is true however, a hacker doesn't have to take control of the aircraft to cause an incident.
They could just target specific components of the system (for example disable comms) and cause an accident without actually trying to fly the aircraft.
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"Not your typical windows desktop"
Maybe not, but laptop based scanning & sniffing tools will soon expose open ports and capture and analyze traffic going in & out of the server including interfacing app ID's and passwords (even if encrypted). Non-mainstream O/S's did not stop Flame or Stuxnet which were specially crafted to target SCADA systems. It is not beyond the bounds of probability that sooner or later the bad actors will figure out how to craft malware that has been specifically tailored to interface with aircraft borne servers such as the T7.
The prospect of Windows like O/S's being used on the 787 and A340's is even more scary.
The prospect of Windows like O/S's being used on the 787 and A340's is even more scary.
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This news report states that Malaysian Airlines does receive ACARS data from its Boeing jets, but that it declined to have these data shared with Boeing. Further, it cites Malaysian Airlines as stating that it received no ACARS data from the missing jet.
Malaysian Air Said to Opt Out of Boeing Plan to Share Jets? Data - Yahoo Finance
Of course the problem with this whole situation is that other than for knowing that the jet has not landed at any major airport, we are sure of absolutely nothing else about this flight. So much has been stated and retracted, nothing can be relied upon.
Malaysian Air Said to Opt Out of Boeing Plan to Share Jets? Data - Yahoo Finance
Of course the problem with this whole situation is that other than for knowing that the jet has not landed at any major airport, we are sure of absolutely nothing else about this flight. So much has been stated and retracted, nothing can be relied upon.
truckflyer (and it seems others)
No, that's not in the Boeing procedure for a rapid descent.
General point and as I believe has been stated - on some 777's (if not all, customer option's and all that) the passenger oxygen is supplied from bottles located under cabin floor and aft of the wing.
From I recall in decompression you should switch TA/RA to TA - is it not plausible that in error they instead put transponder into STBY mode?
General point and as I believe has been stated - on some 777's (if not all, customer option's and all that) the passenger oxygen is supplied from bottles located under cabin floor and aft of the wing.
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PA28Viking AND then my question is: Would there still be logs of that aircraft-DME communication?
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Hacking a Plane
I will not add anything to the speculations on this thread, and I am for sure not suspecting that computer security issues are the source of the problem.
I am not a pilot, but I am an active researcher in the area of computer security, and I want to add my two cents. While it may be science fiction to think of a plane being remotely controlled by an attacker, the possibility of vulnerabilities allowing for serious damage to a modern aircraft is a serious possibility.
Our community has been very successful in surfacing a number of vulnerabilities in modern cars. It is for instance possible to seriously endanger the safety of the occupants by using the embedded GSM connection used for diagnostics by car manufacturers. Similarly, the brakes could be disabled via the audio system. These and many more attacks have been widely documented in the academic research community (and tested on actual cars): Some more information can for example be found on the webpage of a joint research group established by the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego -- cf. CAESS - Home
With airplanes being far more complex systems, it would be pretentious to expect the absence of vulnerabilities. The only barrier preventing us from finding security issues is the simple unfeasibility of obtaining a whole 777 to play with, rendering it unusable via different types of attacks. But the consensus is certainly that there has been a lack of interaction between the computer security community and the aviation industry -- add to this the fact that the 777 is an older design (in IT years) and we learnt so much about security vulnerabilities over the last 15 years.
Overall, I would never confidently claim such vulnerabilities do not exist, as such claims have always proved themselves wrong in the past. The car industry made at first similar claims, but has in the meanwhile undergone massive investments to improve the situation after the above attacks have been exhibited 4 years ago.
Hope this puts things into perspective a bit better.
I am not a pilot, but I am an active researcher in the area of computer security, and I want to add my two cents. While it may be science fiction to think of a plane being remotely controlled by an attacker, the possibility of vulnerabilities allowing for serious damage to a modern aircraft is a serious possibility.
Our community has been very successful in surfacing a number of vulnerabilities in modern cars. It is for instance possible to seriously endanger the safety of the occupants by using the embedded GSM connection used for diagnostics by car manufacturers. Similarly, the brakes could be disabled via the audio system. These and many more attacks have been widely documented in the academic research community (and tested on actual cars): Some more information can for example be found on the webpage of a joint research group established by the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego -- cf. CAESS - Home
With airplanes being far more complex systems, it would be pretentious to expect the absence of vulnerabilities. The only barrier preventing us from finding security issues is the simple unfeasibility of obtaining a whole 777 to play with, rendering it unusable via different types of attacks. But the consensus is certainly that there has been a lack of interaction between the computer security community and the aviation industry -- add to this the fact that the 777 is an older design (in IT years) and we learnt so much about security vulnerabilities over the last 15 years.
Overall, I would never confidently claim such vulnerabilities do not exist, as such claims have always proved themselves wrong in the past. The car industry made at first similar claims, but has in the meanwhile undergone massive investments to improve the situation after the above attacks have been exhibited 4 years ago.
Hope this puts things into perspective a bit better.
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garage mechanic re- hacking
Quote:
Yes you are right you cannot reprogam an eprom without removing it because you have to UV erase it, and the eprom essentially is the computer in a simple bit of kit.
However we have progressed most modern ECU use an FPGA which is reprogram in situ and these have been in common use for over 10 yrs. If the aircraft system didn't have them originally you can bet it has been upgrade because program changes become quicker and cheaper than box swapping.
Now that means there is an external access to them so plugging into the PC port or wireless may well make hacking possible.
I subscribe to the belief if you can build it someone will hack it, look at the so say secure financial systems that have been hacked. To see IT guys believing that a system is unhackable is frightening with it's complacency. Do you remember stuxnet?
Satellites can be hacked, missiles can be hacked, cars can be hacked, ATMs can be hacked. ANYTHING computer based can be hacked.
Not strictly true at all. I have a fairly old car. It has an engine management computer. It cannot be hacked. Why not? It has NO external interface, except for a single WIRED connector. It cannot be reprogrammed through this connector. The only way to re-program it is to replace the internal EPROM with another. Sure there are NEWER engine management computers in newer cars, that have DIFFERENT architectures, that may not be so robust...
My point is it is NOT true that ANYTHING with a computer in it can be hacked. Only systems with open interfaces can. Some of the most unhackable computers are old MS-DOS machines (remember 386 CPUs. eh!), with NO Ethernet or similar network interface. Hack that.
I've worked with the T7 avionics....
Not strictly true at all. I have a fairly old car. It has an engine management computer. It cannot be hacked. Why not? It has NO external interface, except for a single WIRED connector. It cannot be reprogrammed through this connector. The only way to re-program it is to replace the internal EPROM with another. Sure there are NEWER engine management computers in newer cars, that have DIFFERENT architectures, that may not be so robust...
My point is it is NOT true that ANYTHING with a computer in it can be hacked. Only systems with open interfaces can. Some of the most unhackable computers are old MS-DOS machines (remember 386 CPUs. eh!), with NO Ethernet or similar network interface. Hack that.
I've worked with the T7 avionics....
However we have progressed most modern ECU use an FPGA which is reprogram in situ and these have been in common use for over 10 yrs. If the aircraft system didn't have them originally you can bet it has been upgrade because program changes become quicker and cheaper than box swapping.
Now that means there is an external access to them so plugging into the PC port or wireless may well make hacking possible.
I subscribe to the belief if you can build it someone will hack it, look at the so say secure financial systems that have been hacked. To see IT guys believing that a system is unhackable is frightening with it's complacency. Do you remember stuxnet?
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They could just target specific components of the system (for example disable comms) and cause an accident without actually trying to fly the aircraft.
But how much could they do to safety critical systems ? I suspect the numbers plummet dramatically, if not to zero.
How much could they do to safety critical systems that the flight crew could not overrule by flicking a switch or pulling a CB ? I suspect the number is exactly zero.
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Lost in Saigon, Unless you have been trained in high altitude breathing then even if you are receiving oxygen, you still wont be able to breathe. At high altitude you must consciously inhale and exhale, there is insufficient air pressure for your body to exhale automatically.
Think of the acclimatisation periods required by climbers ascending Everest, they are training their bodies to breathe with reduced air pressure.
Think of the acclimatisation periods required by climbers ascending Everest, they are training their bodies to breathe with reduced air pressure.
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did mil rad see SQ68
back on page 112 DYE wrote in post 2234 (now 2230)
I have tried to reproduce this using flt SQ68 and MH370 and can't anyone else tried
Going to very embarassing if this is true
Checked FR24 at 07 MAR 2014 - 18:10 UTC (08 MAR 2014 02:10 local time)
FR24 shows SQ68 FL300 SIN - BCN B777W approx 200 miles north-west of Penang.
FR24 shows SQ68 FL300 SIN - BCN B777W approx 200 miles north-west of Penang.
Going to very embarassing if this is true
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As fr a standby list on a plane that appears not to be full- it is possible they were operating a restricted passenger load due to cargo/weight restrictions. Any T7 drivers care to comment?
My lot do this regularly but it is usually on much longer routes...
My lot do this regularly but it is usually on much longer routes...
worth pointing out pax oxy pointless above about 25k.
The unpressurised 25K limit was, I thought, due to issues with decompression "sickness"...
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secure financial systems that have been hacked. To see IT guys believing that a system is unhackable is frightening with it's complacency. Do you remember stuxnet?
And a difference between aircraft systems and stuxnet. You only need to go read up a bit on stuxnet to realise how "special" it was for many reasons (i.e. highly likely to be a well funded, "western" government project with specific targets in mind that they had evidently done much research on before). A LOT of money and manpower went into stuxnet .... more than any tewwowist organisation could ever dream of !
I'm not saying aircraft systems are invincible, I'm just saying its utterly ludicrous to say someone can get 100% remote control over an aircraft, even more so in a manner that the flight crew can't overrule. The chance of an aircraft being hit by a meteorite is far more likely !
Wiggy, it definitely seems like a customer option. Every Boeing I've ever worked on (737, 767, 777) has had a fixed chemical system, another poster pointed out that some have bottled.
In my outfit they are chemically generated.
I was under the impression that bottles were an add-on option for airlines who mainly fly through high terrain alts on a regular basis (i.e. QF 747s to UK) Seems I was wrong on that.
But it's definitely varying between operators because mine uses individual generators. They are also one of the largest 777 operators so this may have something to do with it
In my outfit they are chemically generated.
I was under the impression that bottles were an add-on option for airlines who mainly fly through high terrain alts on a regular basis (i.e. QF 747s to UK) Seems I was wrong on that.
But it's definitely varying between operators because mine uses individual generators. They are also one of the largest 777 operators so this may have something to do with it
Hoagey74
Unless the National Reconnaissance Office or the DOD itself whose SBIRS satellites are lying to us, just not saying, there were no flashes, explosions, or bright lights in the area being discussed at the time being discussed.
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Lost in Saigon, Unless you have been trained in high altitude breathing then even if you are receiving oxygen, you still wont be able to breathe. At high altitude you must consciously inhale and exhale, there is insufficient air pressure for your body to exhale automatically.
Think of the acclimatisation periods required by climbers ascending Everest, they are training their bodies to breathe with reduced air pressure.
Think of the acclimatisation periods required by climbers ascending Everest, they are training their bodies to breathe with reduced air pressure.