SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Four years ago, IOActive security researcher Ruben Santamarta came to Black Hat USA to warn about insecurities in aircraft satellite-communication (SATCOM) systems. Now he's back with more doom and gloom.

During a presentation at this year's hacking conference in Las Vegas this week, he claimed he had found a host of flaws in aircraft, shipping, and military satellite comms and antenna-control boxes that can be exploited to snoop on transmissions, disrupt transportation, infiltrate computers on military bases, and more – including possibly directing radio-transmission electronics to bathe fleshy humans in unhealthy amounts of electromagnetic radiation.

“It’s pretty much the same principle as a microwave oven,” he told The Register. “The flaws allow us to ramp up the frequency.”

The vulnerabilities stem from a variety of blunders made by SATCOM hardware manufacturers. Some build backdoors into their products for remote maintenance, which can be found and exploited, while other equipment has been found to be misconfigured or using hardcoded credentials, opening them up to access by miscreants. These holes can be abused by a canny hacker to take control of an installation's antenna, and monitor the information the data streams contain.

"Some of the largest airlines in the US and Europe had their entire fleets accessible from the internet, exposing hundreds of in-flight aircraft," according to Santamarta. "Sensitive NATO military bases in conflict zones were discovered through vulnerable SATCOM infrastructure. Vessels around the world are at risk as attackers can use their own SATCOM antennas to expose the crew to radio-frequency radiation."

Essentially, think of these vulnerable machines as internet-facing or network-connected computers, complete with exploitable remote-code-execution vulnerabilities. Once you've been able to get control of them – and there are hundreds exposed to the internet, apparently – you can disrupt or snoop on or meddle with their communications, possibly point antennas at people, and attack other devices on the same network.

[...] He also claimed it is possible to take over an aircraft's satellite-communications system from the ground, depending on the model, and then potentially not only commandeer the in-flight Wi-Fi access point but also menace devices of individual passengers. The in-flight wireless network could also be hacked while onboard the airplane, we're told, if you'd rather not go the SATCOM route.

It would not be possible for him to hijack the aircraft's core control systems, though, as these are kept strictly separate and locked down. The aircraft SATCOM holes have since been fixed, he told the conference.

Original Submission