Wonderful. The new Boeing 787 is probably hackable.

[thewayne]

They installed a computer network in it for the passengers. That's cool, kudos for that. But the morons made it touch the aircraft's network, says a spokeswoman: "There are places where the networks are not touching, and there are places where they are."

YOU CANNOT MINGLE CRITICAL NETWORKS! You create two networks -- two separate cable runs (or fiber runs), they NEVER touch! It has been proven time and again that defending a network is an on-going war, and there is no way that Boeing is going to be the least bit proactive about doing this. Their job is making huge-ass airplanes for moving people through the air, it's not network defense.

If the "passengers" network goes down, and a flight attendant pressing a reset button on a server doesn't bring it back up, then the passengers have to amuse themselves for the remainder of the flight. IT'S NOT QUITE THAT EASY IF THE CONTROL NETWORK GOES DOWN.

The only advantage is that the aircraft control network is probably not using protocols that will be familiar to the average 14 year old. Still, what happens if they use a single laptop to do a packet flood and DDOS the aircraft? You don't need to know how something works to take a sledge hammer to it.

Morons.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/01/dreamliner_security

Comments

[apostate-96.livejournal.com]

For a giant like Boeing, it'd come down to how much lost lives cost them, whether in lawsuits or fines. I'd bet they've got a certain amount budgeted for covering the expenses of accidents, just like it was learned companies like Ford did after the debacle with the Pinto. With the big corporations, sadly money is more consistently valued than human life.