“The Hack in the Box security conference in Amsterdam has a very interesting lineup of talks,” Darlene Storm reports for Computerworld. “One that jumped out was the Aircraft Hacking: Practical Aero Series presented by Hugo Teso, a security consultant at n.runs in Germany.”
Strom reports, “According to the abstract, ‘This presentation will be a practical demonstration on how to remotely attack and take full control of an aircraft, exposing some of the results of my three years research on the aviation security field. The attack performed will follow the classical methodology, divided in discovery, information gathering, exploitation and post-exploitation phases. The complete attack will be accomplished remotely, without needing physical access to the target aircraft at any time, and a testing laboratory will be used to attack virtual airplanes systems.'”
“Once he was into the airplane’s computer, he was able to manipulate the steering of a Boeing jet while the aircraft was in ‘autopilot’ mode. The only countermeasure available to pilots, if they even realized they were being hacked, would be to turn off autopilot. Yet many planes no longer have old analog instruments for manual flying. Teso said he could take control of most all airplane systems; he could even cause the plane to crash by setting it on a collision course with another plane. He could also give the passengers a serious adrenaline rush by making the oxygen masks drop down,” Strom reports. “Teso used his Samsung Galaxy and a specially crafted app called PlaneSploit to demonstrate how to hack an airplane’s computer. Crime Site also showed a quick clip of the hack. And no, PlaneSploit is not going to be available to the masses to hijack planes with their Android devices.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: No Fragmandroid Apple knockoff devices allowed past airport security checkpoints in 3… 2…
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