Feds Say That Banned Researcher Hacked Flight Control Systems
May 17th, 2015And Now: Man’s Claims of Hacking Plane Discredited by Law Enforcement
Via: Bloomberg:
U.S. law enforcement officials have no credible evidence that commercial airplane cockpits have been hacked from passengers’ seats, contradicting a man who claims he did just that.
While most airplanes can’t be hacked because flight-control computers are separate from the connections passengers use, newer aircraft have more interconnections, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said an April 14 report. Chris Roberts, founder of security intelligence company One World Labs, claimed to FBI agents that he exploited such interconnections 15 to 20 times, and in at least one instance sent commands to an engine.
Investigators don’t believe that such attempts could be successful, a senior law enforcement official said Monday. The official asked not to be named because an investigation is continuing into Roberts’s claims of tampering, which would be illegal under federal law.
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Via: Wired:
A security researcher kicked off a United Airlines flight last month after tweeting about security vulnerabilities in its system had previously taken control of an airplane and caused it to briefly fly sideways, according to an application for a search warrant filed by an FBI agent.
Chris Roberts, a security researcher with One World Labs, told the FBI agent during an interview in February that he had hacked the in-flight entertainment system, or IFE, on an airplane and overwrote code on the plane’s Thrust Management Computer while aboard the flight. He was able to issue a climb command and make the plane briefly change course, the document states.
“He stated that he thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb resulting in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of these flights,” FBI Special Agent Mark Hurley wrote in his warrant application (.pdf). “He also stated that he used Vortex software after comprising/exploiting or ‘hacking’ the airplane’s networks. He used the software to monitor traffic from the cockpit system.”
