Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#281

Post by gvb » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 3:52 PM UTC

danielschonfeld wrote: post #225

If they shut off the transponder, which we know they did, how would they get the traffic information on their NDs? It goes away when you turn off the transponder. To the best of my knowledge that applies to both Mode-S interrogations and ADS/B ones.

The flights through that area are scheduled, it would be trivial to figure out which flights go in the direction you want to go and thus can hide behind. After that, you precalculate the intercept to a plane that works timing-wise before you take off. Non-trivial, but simple enough to do - on ground ahead of time you can get a computer to do all the work.

Once you go dark, you fly the traditional way with GPS and nav aides (GPS, VORs, etc, are broadcast, so you can use them passively) backed up by manual nav with time, speed, and bearings. Note that handheld (throw it on the dash) pilot grade GPSes are readily available and relatively cheap.

Intercepting the target aircraft is do-able via visual contact if your navigation is reasonably good and the target aircraft is on time.

If you have help on the ground, they could use FlightAware to update the hijacking crew via something like HF radio, again a passive receive on the hijacked aircraft. This would be very helpful for the hijacking crew to improve their intercept by adjusting their speed so that they sneak up under and behind the target aircraft.

Edit: As thekevan points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416153), the hijackers could use a ADS/B receiver (SDR and laptop or equivalent) to receive the position data from the target aircraft. This would make it pretty easy to form up on them. Again, this is passive (the target aircraft broadcasts its ADS/B information).

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#282

Post by resu » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 3:53 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #239

smoyer wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"points toward the involvement of one or more state actors" I agree ... and so I think it's become useful to identify the skills and knowledge of each of the jet's passengers. You have to assume that, in this case, the plane was hijacked in order to obtain one of the passengers. Terrorism simply doesn't make sense!

Or they were hijacking a plane to stuff it full of chemical weapons / radioactive material (think dirty bomb) with the intent of flying it over a major city and detonating it. It would be hard to do it in a western nation, but if you were aiming at a city near the "frontier" of India, Pakistan, etc. a bad actor could likely execute the plan before the jets they scramble could intercept the jet. There's a lot of bad s…

I strongly doubt it's either. Both are close allies with China. Chinese passengers made up the majority of that flight.

Is whatever this flight was carrying worth risking fraying their alliances? Highly improbable.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#283

Post by cube13 » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 3:57 PM UTC

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #269

Shivetya wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do people underestimate what terrorist groups are capable of? Some have training from various countries and quite a few have financial and material backing. If anything, the common theme on this site was to find every possible explanation other than terrorism. Sorry to be the party pooper, but there are people out there who operate without regard to our beliefs and at times love to exploit the stories we tell our…

Yes, but I think what Herbig is saying is that the increased sophistication of assumptions means decreased likelihood that this was a deliberate hijacking. We get further away from Occam's razor in order to satisfy that. As of yet we haven't seen any group take responsibility, no claims of hostages or anything remotely indicative of this. So if it was taken by a terrorist group, where is the terrorism they plan to co…

This is the kind of target that would have someone claiming responsibility. The plane wasn't from a country that's known for disproportionate responses to attacks(i.e. the US or Russia). I would figure that if any group actually did pull this off, they'd be making public announcements that they took down the plane, or were holding it for ransom.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#284

Post by maaku » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

etherael wrote: post #202

smoyer wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"points toward the involvement of one or more state actors" I agree ... and so I think it's become useful to identify the skills and knowledge of each of the jet's passengers. You have to assume that, in this case, the plane was hijacked in order to obtain one of the passengers. Terrorism simply doesn't make sense!

20 freescale semiconductor employees on board.

And so "they" hijack a plane to get these guys? Wouldn't it be easier to just kidnap them at gunpoint from their hotel?

The freescale connection is a total red herring. Either they intended to land/crash the plane somewhere and failed, or the plane was the target and it's now sitting in some deserted desert airstrip getting retrofitted for whatever mission it is intended for.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#285

Post by Nanzikambe » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

jdimov wrote: post #65

fnsa wrote: post #52

A theory is that the cargo area of the plane contained valuable goods: gold, silver, diamonds, etc and that's what the hijackers were after. From this: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-15/missing-malaysian-f... the 777 can have up to 25 tons worth of cargo payload. 25 tons of gold is worth ~ $1B, that's quite a bit more than the value of the plane itself.

No one in their right mind would attempt to transport 25 tons of gold on a commercial passenger flight.

It does happen, security by obscurity is actually quite prevalent outside of Infosec: if nobody knows it's there how can it be stolen?

Search for "Heathrow Runway Robberies", etc. There were a number of documentaries on the subject, IIRC there were several gangs that specialized in jacking crap off planes in airports. It's possible (however unlikely) that some graduated beyond the airport.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#286

Post by macNchz » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

yannyu wrote: post #112

simias wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what the twenty Freescale employees have to do with anything and I keep seeing this fact mentioned in every discussion about MH370. How could they be important/valuable/dangerous enough to justify the hijacking or destruction of a commercial airliner containing hundreds of passengers? That sounds completely insane to me.

It's a bit Bond/cyberpunk-esque, but one could imagine a scenario where an evil villain could short a company's stock and then kill off 20 extremely valuable employees of said company. Not saying that's what happened here, but 20 of the right employees of a company could be very significant.

Incidentally, this is exactly how you can make a lot of money early on in the GTA V story mode.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#287

Post by fafner » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 4:16 PM UTC

leoc wrote: post #271

fafner wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, really. You are looking at it after the fact. Paying off a pilot who is skilled enough to fly the aircraft evading all radar and land it unassisted at night or early dawn on some remote airbase would be a major expense. Paying someone to kill off the rest of the 220 passengers would be a big challenge as well. And everybody involved would know that and the additional risk and thus demand much more money. You wou…

> Paying off a pilot who is skilled enough to fly the aircraft evading all radar and land it unassisted at night or early dawn on some remote airbase would be a major expense. Paying someone to kill off the rest of the 220 passengers would be a big challenge as well. And everybody involved would know that and the additional risk and thus demand much more money. You would have to find such an airbase. And you would ha…

> On the contrary, I think that any such alternative plan to kidnap and interrogate a handful of the Freescale guys would probably seem at least as risky if you described it in some detail, then looked at it with as much scepticism as you've directed at the flight-370 version.

I doubt it because the aircraft simply adds a huge amount of risk and has little benefit. The only two benefits are that they are all in one place and that they are on a vehicle which can bring them out of the country. But the former could certainly be achieved in another way. Where they on a business trip in Malaysia? That would simplify it a lot because you could get them easily in the hotel or even better on the transfer to the airport.

The latter is almost perfect. You hijack the minibusses used by the transfer company. You load up the unsuspecting employees. Drive them to a hideout and either force them with weapons or by using knock-out gas. Wait a few hours until it's night. And then you can drive them to the coast, load them into a small boat, and bring them to a larger vessel waiting off the coast. There are of course risks, like a random police encounter or someone noticing you loading people onto a small boat. But to me it seems they pale in comparison to successfully hijacking an aircraft, flying it unassisted while evading radar to a hidden location, which is far away from any civilians or foreign military infrastructure, getting rid of 220 people, getting rid of a huge aircraft.

But in the end who would be worth all this attention and money? I guess buying off the person you want would be cheaper. If some country wanted to hire the Freescale guys then promising each $1m/yr would probably be cheaper and significantly less risky.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#288

Post by bitkrieg » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 4:35 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #257

herbig wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the level of sophistication required increasingly points to a much simpler explanation than terrorism.

why do people underestimate what terrorist groups are capable of? Some have training from various countries and quite a few have financial and material backing. If anything, the common theme on this site was to find every possible explanation other than terrorism. Sorry to be the party pooper, but there are people out there who operate without regard to our beliefs and at times love to exploit the stories we tell our…

Acts of violence without the "publicity" are not terrorism.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#289

Post by thekevan » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 4:42 PM UTC

jballanc wrote: post #45

The folks over at airliners.net have pointed out that the 777's collision avoidance system only works if both planes' transponders are turned on. That doesn't mean this scenario is impossible, but it does raise the level of sophistication required. Sadly, I feel like whatever happened, the amount of sophistication involved increasingly points toward the involvement of one or more state actors. If that's the case, I'm…

"UPDATE - Monday, March 17, 2014 - 12:15 PM EST Some have raised the statement that TCAS doesn’t work if the transponder is disabled… this is only partially correct. Other planes TCAS would NOT see MH370 at all. MH370 would not actively query other planes as it’s transponder is off HOWEVER it could still listen to any transponder output from other planes that are actively transmitting. SQ68 would have been actively transmitting while in-range of Subang ATC center.

Even if TCAS on MH370 wasn’t working for some reason, an in-expensive portable ADS-B receiver paired with an iPad and Foreflight app would allow a pilot to receive the ADS-B output being transmitted by SQ68 at that time."

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#290

Post by venomsnake » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

twistedpair wrote: post #249

ekianjo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, I feel like whatever happened, the amount of sophistication involved increasingly points toward the involvement of one or more state actors. If that's the case, I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever find out what happened to this plane... Indeed. And not just the "what", but the "why" as well.

Why? Three cases of pilots committing suicide with big jets in the last few years. Silk Air 185, Egypt Air 990, LAM 470. So either (a) it's an act of war by another country or (b) the far simpler a pilot committed suicide. However, it if was a state actor, would you as the US tell people that? Wars cost trillions. Perhaps just sweep it under the rug.

If you want to kill yourself - you just fly the plane into the ground during landing or takeoff. It is way too elaborate to get to the no mans land and then fly 5 hours and crash somewhere.