Just a spotter
7th Apr 2011, 12:38
Airbus has just announced a number of new upgrades to their A320 family
Airbus Plans Further A320 Upgrades | AVIATION WEEK (http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=comm&id=news/avd/2011/04/07/08.xml)
As someone with nearly 25 years experience in the IT industry, much of it involved in systems security, one upgrade option in particular struck me;
The first is an electronic flight bag option that will enable pilots to plug laptops into a docking station. The system has been configured to handle a variety of laptops, says Wolfgang Engler, A320 family chief engineer. The connection—using Arinc 828 compliant wiring—will enable aircraft and laptop to exchange relevant information.As we've witnessed recently with the Stuxnet worm, which targeted Siemens industrial systems by jumping from windows PC hosts (which it merely used as a transport mechanism and did not attack), interconnecting PC's with 'critical' systems should be done with caution.
One hopes and assumes that those in charge within Airbus of this upgrade have reviewed this risk and developed a layer of safeguards to protect the systems from the risk of being connected to numerous PC's (which themselves may or may not have a level of protection on them, and may be exposed to potential attack or infection via email or Internet links when not connected to the aircraft).
JAS
Airbus Plans Further A320 Upgrades | AVIATION WEEK (http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=comm&id=news/avd/2011/04/07/08.xml)
As someone with nearly 25 years experience in the IT industry, much of it involved in systems security, one upgrade option in particular struck me;
The first is an electronic flight bag option that will enable pilots to plug laptops into a docking station. The system has been configured to handle a variety of laptops, says Wolfgang Engler, A320 family chief engineer. The connection—using Arinc 828 compliant wiring—will enable aircraft and laptop to exchange relevant information.As we've witnessed recently with the Stuxnet worm, which targeted Siemens industrial systems by jumping from windows PC hosts (which it merely used as a transport mechanism and did not attack), interconnecting PC's with 'critical' systems should be done with caution.
One hopes and assumes that those in charge within Airbus of this upgrade have reviewed this risk and developed a layer of safeguards to protect the systems from the risk of being connected to numerous PC's (which themselves may or may not have a level of protection on them, and may be exposed to potential attack or infection via email or Internet links when not connected to the aircraft).
JAS