Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

btr.pm

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 147 posts

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#91

Post by [deleted] »

mseebach wrote: post #82
zero_one_one wrote: post #68

There's a lot of posts mentioning that a scan shouldn't cause any trouble, however there's no way of knowing how the services are configured on the other end, or how they are set up to respond to certain packet types, or how the server will respond to certain data within those packets if said data does not conform to expected lengths etc. A lot of assumptions are made that non-conforming data will be ignored in a clo…

I remember about 20 years ago, you could crash any Windows computer you had the IP address of by sending a particularly crafted package to a certain port. Oh, those were the days.

[deleted]

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#92

Post by JoblessWonder »

willvarfar wrote: post #28
tptacek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing you do to the IFE is going to take down the plane.

In theory the IFE and avionics are separated by firewalls. Some things like the PA system are often on the IFE side, and hacks for panasonic IFE have included impersonating the pilot announcements and stuff. In practice I wouldn't expect the firewalls to be particularly well tested or complete or configured correctly, and it may be possible for an attacker to DOS the firewall and impact the other systems, and possibl…

I only have experience with smaller, general aviation aircraft (Turboprop, 8 seats) but the IFE is indeed connected to the same box that handles maintenance tools. The ipad we use to troubleshoot the engines is on the same wifi network that we use to watch videos.

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#93

Post by bonzini »

mseebach wrote: post #83
bonzini wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when are web servers DO-178 certified?

Wild guess: Roughly about the time they began being used in IFE systems?

Not at levels A-D, which are the ones where the faults "should not be there" (citing the parent comment).

At level E you only have to prove that there's no effects of faults on safety-critical systems, so it's more about the surrounding architecture than the software itself.

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#94

Post by InTheArena »

sschueller wrote: post #46
jgrahamc wrote: post #24

I wish people wouldn't do shit like this on live systems like this one. Even the port scan could have had bad consequences (especially since this person did -A). By all means explore the interesting JSON object that was downloaded and yeah I'd worry about installing random stuff on my machine. I'm not talking about crashing the plane; I'm talking about crashing the IFE and me then having to sit through 10 hours of pe…

Swissair flight 111 crashed because of a fire that started in in flight entertainment system. Although isolated it still caused a fire that caused the highest death toll for the MD11 which was considered a very safe aircraft. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111

The MD-11 is considered a safe aircraft, because almost all airliners are very very safe. comparatively to the Airbus and Boeign equivalent, it is not viewed as a particularly safe aircraft, as it was derived from the DC-10 (which had a epically bad reputation). while a lot of the issues with the DC-10 were fixed, there longer length of the plane caused issue.s

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#95

Post by uremog »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #89
jgrahamc wrote: post #24

I wish people wouldn't do shit like this on live systems like this one. Even the port scan could have had bad consequences (especially since this person did -A). By all means explore the interesting JSON object that was downloaded and yeah I'd worry about installing random stuff on my machine. I'm not talking about crashing the plane; I'm talking about crashing the IFE and me then having to sit through 10 hours of pe…

Out of curiosity, when else would you suggest they do this? Other than "not at all", of course, which is not going to happen.

During a pentest?

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#96

Post by senorprogrammer »

jgrahamc wrote: post #24

I wish people wouldn't do shit like this on live systems like this one. Even the port scan could have had bad consequences (especially since this person did -A). By all means explore the interesting JSON object that was downloaded and yeah I'd worry about installing random stuff on my machine. I'm not talking about crashing the plane; I'm talking about crashing the IFE and me then having to sit through 10 hours of pe…

As someone who used to work in the IFE software field, I can assure you these systems are perfectly capable of crashing themselves in endless loops without any outside help from the likes of us, thank you very much. ;)

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#97

Post by ricardobeat »

tlb wrote: post #88
tptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This keeps getting cited on this thread. The IFE didn't simply "overheat". It had faulty wiring . The coffee maker could just as easily have caused that accident.

Lots of things have faulty wiring, but they keep working as long as their power draw is under some limit. Drawing excess power is a common result of software going into an infinite loop, which is a possible outcome of security probes. Half the bugs I notice in Chrome, I notice because my laptop fan starts running.

A CPU overheating is still completely different from the wiring or other components heating up. It is entirely monitored, can throttle itself or shut down through OOB controls.

It's more likely for your plane to be hit by a falling unicorn than you being able to burn something up just by the power of `while (1)`.

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#98

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

fragmede wrote: post #30
WhitneyLand wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how is it showing the flight metrics? I wouldn’t guess they would add double sensors for all that information. Or did you mean well protected, instead of literal air gap?

Optoisolators are a prolific and an extremely cheap electrical component that performs the "air-gap" functionality.

Electrical safety airgapping and information security airgapping are different, and entirely unrelated. If data can pass from one side to the other it's not airgapped (from an infosec perspective).

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#99

Post by pheldagryph »

tptacek wrote: post #25
duxup wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you'll be on the hook for it." Particularly if something goes terribly wrong and you're on the plane.

Nothing you do to the IFE is going to take down the plane.

Hyperbole like this always makes me nervous. The probability is obviously not zero, politely suggesting the question: "what has been missed in this analysis?"

Re: Boeing 787 In Flight Entertainment System Security fun

#100

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tlb wrote: post #88
tptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This keeps getting cited on this thread. The IFE didn't simply "overheat". It had faulty wiring . The coffee maker could just as easily have caused that accident.

Lots of things have faulty wiring, but they keep working as long as their power draw is under some limit. Drawing excess power is a common result of software going into an infinite loop, which is a possible outcome of security probes. Half the bugs I notice in Chrome, I notice because my laptop fan starts running.

Sure. Hair dryers draw excess power when you drop them in a bathtub. Ground-fault protection outlets are supposed to prevent that. If they don't, the outlet is faulty.

The origin of Murphy's Law was in a rocket sled project. This guy was strapped onto a rocket sled, fired down a track, and then subjected to strong braking forces. "If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong" didn't just mean "stuff happens". It meant, "you have to either make it impossible for it to go wrong, or you have to find a way that, even if it does go wrong, this guy doesn't die". You can't just ignore the problem as unlikely. It will happen sooner or later.

You don't get to say "lots of things have faulty wiring". Things that can kill you had better not have faulty wiring, or had better be able to survive it if they do.

Post reply on HN