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El Reg reports:
The FBI has accused a security researcher of hacking into the entertainment system of a United Airlines plane mid-flight, before causing the aircraft to temporarily fly "sideways".
Infosec bod Chris Roberts allegedly made that audacious claim to Feds' special agent Mark Hurley, who subsequently applied for a search warrant to examine Roberts' seized electronic devices.
Thirteen items, including thumb drives, a MacBook Pro laptop and an iPad Air were confiscated from Roberts on 15 April this year, after the researcher exited a United Airline flight in Syracuse, New York, according to the Feds' affidavit (PDF).
Roberts, who founded One World Labs, has been quizzed twice by the FBI over the course of the past few months.
He apparently told the Feds that he had hacked into the inflight entertainment systems of Airbus and Boeing aircraft roughly 15 to 20 times between 2011 and 2014.
A story from the BBC has a different perspective on the situation:
Prof Alan Woodward from Surrey University told the BBC he found it "difficult to believe" a passenger could access and manipulate flight control systems from a plug socket on an aircraft seat.
"Flight systems are typically kept physically separate, as are any safety critical systems," he said.
"I can imagine only that someone has misunderstood something in the conversation between the researcher and the FBI, someone is exaggerating to make a point, or, it is actually possible and the aircraft manufacturers have some urgent work to do."/blockquote
The researcher in question, Chris Roberts said on twitter, "There's a whole five years of stuff that the affidavit incorrectly compressed into 1 paragraph... lots to untangle".
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday May 18 2015, @07:20PM
Doubt that. A standard GPS receiver can do that without anything from the aircraft's internal systems. Same with air speed. It doesn't have to be accurate at all, just a reference for passengers.
This might be one likely point of entry but I can't see the manufactures being that stupid (though I wouldn't be too surprised otherwise.) How did they perform PA announcements before IFE? I would imagine the pilot selects the channel to transmit over and the PTT button activates the audio channel attached such as a PA amp. For the IFE, its channel channel turns a digital input on for the IFE and it then listens on an analog input channel. That is much more simple and probably they way they went.