Originally Posted by
Intruder
You're overlooking the fact that a good portion of flight time is under control of the autopilot and autothrottles, which are under the control of the FMS. IF someone could hack into the FMS or convince the pilots to execute a hacked ACARS or CPDLC clearance, he COULD effectively control the flight controls and throttles... HOWEVER, hacking into the FMS doesn't appear to be possible in the scenarios covered here...
Intruder, I understand what you are saying, but there
are protections in place - including the fact that we have human pilots who's job is to monitor and take control if the automatics are misbehaving. I no longer have access to the Boeing AFMs, but I know there are specific words in there regarding the necessity to have validation in place before using ACARS, etc. for anything flight critical. Any competent crew should be able to detect if the aircraft isn't going where they want and take corrective action. Now, if you combine a navigation hack with an incompetent crew that is taking an extended siesta, we could have a problem - but then again a crew taking a siesta mid-flight is a problem even without a hack.
Now, if someone shows they can take control of a FBW aircraft (highly unlikely given what I know about critical system isolation on Boeing aircraft), then I'll sit up and pay attention. What's been claimed so far doesn't pass the sniff test...