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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 Common Joe on Tuesday May 19 2015, @04:37AM
This right here is what no one seems to be saying in these stories and it should be blaring quite loudly from the media. The systems should be physically separate for safety reasons. Any half baked security person should tell you that. And I find it hard to believe that the plane manufacturers don't do that since they tend to over-engineer safety on purpose.