41–50 of 147 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scanning should be fine; trying to access them becomes dubious; bruteforcing the login could lead to arrest.
I had a projector firmware freeze up hard on me during a port scan. There is some risk there.
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…
Thank you for this comment. I for one would be pretty pissed if a "hacker" decided to crash my/or my kids entertainment on a long flight. There is definitely a need for this type of work, but doing so in a 50,000 lb brick floating a few miles above the ground isn't an atmosphere I am comfortable with, especially if I am present...
Even if it brought down the server, it's still nothing that the flight attendants can't solve by "turning it off and back on". This kind of fault happens all the time.
More interesting to me is the level of isolation of the network. Could someone exploit my phone through the in-flight WiFi, for example?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 find this hard to believe. I always thought that IFE and avionics are on separate machines and run over different internal networks and wires. But I'm also not a Boeing engineer. Can someone confirm the above post?
Sadly, it seems they usually share wires and are separated by firewalls.
There's been lots of CCC and defcon talks about hacking in-flight systems. Googling "panasonic ife hack" gets plenty of hits, as does "Chris Roberts" who is a hacker who has made some pretty big claims about actually really hacking planes in flight and other stupid things. And there are articles like this https://www.wired.com/2015/04/hackers-commandeer-new-planes-... that talk about how the systems share wires.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Do you have source on panasonic IFE hacks? Sounds interesting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that plane ever plans to enter US or EU airspace, there is a literal air-gap between the IFE and the flight systems.
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?
The flight critical systems would be isolated from in-flight entertainment system (IFE). The IFE probably has a listen-only tap to flight metric info on an ARINC databus from the flight computer. I did a quick search and looks like 787 uses ARINC 667, a fiber optic interconnect.
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…
Were the in flight entertainment touchscreens really capactive? I've found that such designs have almost exclusively been resistive. The resistive designs are cheaper, but also tend to be designed with a high threshold. The two put together makes a lot of resistive touchscreens feel sluggish. You feel like you have to mash the heck out of them to get them to act sometimes. On the upside they don't require human capac…
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.
> I did a port scan on the System Control Unit Is that still white hat? Did they also check to see if the cockpit door is locked?
It's borderline; if something bad happens (and bad things definitely can happen from portscanning, especially embedded systems), you'll be on the hook for it.