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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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday August 11 2018, @05:42PM (1 child)
What it really is, is that the level of attacks is a lot less than the media want you to believe. If a major state wanted to crash our systems, they would have been crashed, and we probably wouldn't know who did it. (That someone would be blamed is a foregone conclusion, but would it be the correct someone?)
That said, is there a good reason why the attack surface isn't being reduced? Perhaps there's some sort of sub-rosa deal, where several sides agree to be vulnerable to demonstrate that you can trust them. That seems unlikely, but it's the only reason I can think of.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 11 2018, @06:04PM
The reason is because competence costs money, and security is something that must be maintained and constantly updated, which means even more money on a regular basis. Better to just bomb shitholes because we can hack everyone else too AND we've got more bigger guns.