Hackers and cyberterrorists present an ever-evolving threat to airlines, with experts constantly testing for new vulnerabilities — including the fear that drones could be used to throw a plane off course.
Most agree hacking a plane would be a near-impossible feat, but some professional hackers have said airline computer systems are riddled with weaknesses that could allow someone to break in, perhaps even through the in-flight entertainment system.
US computer security expert Chris Roberts recently claimed to have hacked into a plane’s controls through the entertainment console and to have issued a “climb” command.
Photo: Reuters
However, speaking at the Paris Air Show this week, Alain Robic of Deloitte Consulting, an expert on cybersecurity, said the claims were not credible.
Robic was working for Airbus in 2005 when a hacker showed them how he could penetrate the flight controls from a passenger seat while they were designing the new A380.
“The bosses were shocked. It was a revolutionary moment. They re-engineered everything to separate the systems so it could never happen again,” Robic said.
However, there are plenty of other risks — and although they are unlikely, companies such as Airbus and Boeing take them very seriously.
David Stupples, a professor of electronic and radio systems at City University in London who advises Airbus, said the latest threat he was exploring was whether a drone could be used to send radio signals to an aircraft and confuse its systems.
“If I could get a signal to the aircraft that caused it to become confused while it’s on its final approach, could I cause an incident? My view is yes,” said Stupples, adding that flying near to the plane could allow the drone to overpower signals from the ground. Stopping this kind of activity means preventing drones from flying near airports — something that has only recently become possible with new forms of radar capable of spotting tiny aircraft.
Stupples said there was a greater threat of an employee with access to the computer data hubs uploading malware to an aircraft’s systems.
“It could be a dissatisfied employee, or someone who has been bribed or who is doing it for a cause,” he said.
Even this would be almost impossible, since airlines have highly complex, specially designed computing systems that only a handful of people know how to navigate.
“Between the probability of someone understanding what they’re doing, the probability of getting the malware in and the probability of it acting like they want — the odds are pretty remote,” Stupples said.
Even if all those factors came together perfectly, hackers would almost certainly not be able to take full control of the aircraft since pilots have manual overrides.
“But to crash, all you have to do is push the flight control systems into an unstable situation,” Stupples said. “I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s possible.”
While public concerns tend to focus on the terrorist risk, companies face a much more immediate and frequent threat from hackers trying to steal their commercial secrets. Hacks can cost tens of millions of dollars to repair and could be used to extort money by planting threats. As aviation goes increasingly digital, threats have adapted.
“A lot of data is now automatically uploaded to planes so they can remove the risk of human error as much as possible,” said a pilot for a major airline, who was not allowed to give his name.
Many airlines now issue their pilots and cabin crew with iPads because they weigh less than piles of charts and passenger logs.
“The airlines are ultra-strict with us about the security of our iPads and everything else — much stricter than with passengers because they worry about coercion, that our family has been kidnapped or something,” the pilot said.
Robic said it was time for the whole aeronautic industry to create a joint cybersecurity organization to combine their efforts.
“There is a whole eco-system of staff that needs to be secured. There are a great many actors from development to maintenance, which exposes airlines to cyberrisks,” he said. “What they’re doing at the moment is not sufficient.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last