NEWS
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has revealed it fears Boeing's 787 Dreamliner computer systems could be hacked by passengers.
The 787's flight, business and administrative support navigation systems, and entertainment systems - including internet services offered to passengers - are not sufficiently isolated, according to a report issued by the FAA this week.
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The report said: "It allows new kinds of passenger connectivity to previously isolated data networks connected to systems that perform functions required for the safe operation of the airplane. Because of this new passenger connectivity, the proposed data network design and integration may result in security vulnerabilities from intentional or unintentional corruption of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane."
Boeing currently has 800 orders for the 787 Dreamliner, which it began assembling in 2007, three years after it was initially launched. The 787, which seats up to 381 passengers, is set to become Boeing's second most popular plane after the 737 with almost half of Qantas's 51 orders from Boeing made up of 787s.
The FAA has outlined special conditions regarding the design of the 787's computer networks that Boeing must meet before the aircraft can be used commercially.
The FAA's conditions stipulated the 787's network design must prevent any changes -- malicious or otherwise - to any of the aircraft's hardware and software systems from within the "entertainment and information network" used by passengers.
Although the International Air Line Pilots Association has recommended the planes are also equipped with a system for flight crew to manually disable passengers' ability to connect to certain networked systems, the FAA has said it will not impose technical requirements on Boeing, but rather allow Boeing to develop its own solution to the FAA's functional requirements.
Liam Tung writes for ZDNet Australia
Comments
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1. Guy Reynolds
Potential re-make of the 1983 movie 'Wargames', and all the airport disaster movies
Plot: Child on a flight aboard a 787, takes out a Nintendo DS and hooks upto a wifi filght simulator game and sunddenly finds that they are flying the plane.......
2. Joe Whitehead
Not very realistic but still funny story idea, Reynolds.
I figure that what will happen is that the system will be secure but some incompetent person will open a hole and no one else will notice for many years. If the design is bad, it could be just as easy as plugging a laptop into one of the open connections in the cockpit. I'd think this unlikely to be possible but I've seen how many crashes were caused by silly things like running the control signals for a helicopter's rear rotor over an external RF connection! (Library in the computer shelves)
There should obviously be network bandwidth controls and encrypted ports with no encrypted data going over any public nodes. Also, prevention of ARP poisoning and the such will have to exist. This means a fixed route for specific devices, for one.