Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#161

Post by nick_kline » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 7:58 AM UTC

ir77 wrote: post #12

i'm surprised that people are surprised by this. i work for aerospace, and this is fairly typical -- albeit not floppy disk examples, but we keep a bunch of old laptops running win 7 and other examples around, hound around for them and spare parts. these machines are off the network, etc. these systems were developed 20+ years ago and per contract the a manufacture is obligated to maintain them for the service life,…

Why don't you run your old system in a vm running in a new system? That is standard practice at some places. Was there special hardware, not just say usb ports?

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#162

Post by dTal » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 10:31 AM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #59

The bigger story in the article is how little security review the software on these planes get > "Aircraft themselves are really expensive beasts, you know," said Lomas as he filmed inside the big Boeing. "Even if you had all the will in the world, airlines and manufacturers won't just let you pentest an aircraft because [they] don't know what state you're going to leave it in."

That logic is baffling. If it's so easy to render a plane unsafe that they're frightened of letting someone pentest it, surely that would indicate a major problem that it's much better to find out about on your own terms?

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#163

Post by helb » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:07 PM UTC

lizknope wrote: post #16

The article said the floppy drive is kept behind a locked panel. The article doesn't mention if the updates fit on a single floppy or a stack of 20 floppies. I don't see a fundamental problem as long as the data has checksums to make sure that it transferred successfully. I used to get tons of errors on floppy disks transferring data back in the 90's using Sun workstations and PCs. I started making my own checksums t…

> if the updates fit on a single floppy or a stack of 20 floppies

The display says "INSERT DISK #1" so probably at least two, and it looks like there's a place for maybe a dozen under the "diskette stowage latch":

https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/08/10/b744navdatafloppydrive.jpg

https://twitter.com/harrymccracken/status/940263706444754945...

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#164

Post by zikohh » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

Is the 747 the only plane that uses floppy disks or are there newer ones that do have the same?

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#165

Post by samus » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:36 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #66

justapassenger wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry how companies will be able to provide similar services in the future, as more and more stuff is running as services in the cloud. It’ll most likely become more and more costly, as you won’t be able to buy offline version of some complement, and keep it working on your support device for 30 years. You’ll need to build all of them yourself. And that will also most likely mean it’ll be less reliable.

Lol. Aircraft software running "in the cloud". Damb right it will. It will also work "in the rain" and "in the snow".

The maintenance and logistics software for the F35 is supposedly implemented with a cloud architecture. Though the project is probably old enough that the cloud hasn't found its way into the flight systems yet...