All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#61

Post by wpietri » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #40

theandrewbailey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the Achilles heel of the entire Internet of Things and smart appliance trend, and I think this will bite everyone bad. After 50+% of these vendors go out of business in the next decade, their products won't get updated, and people will wonder why their "smart" TV can't watch movies from whatever replaced Netflix/new whizbang video service. They won't be as likely to buy any "smart" thing again.

Roughly OT: I have yet to have seen anything that makes me look forward to the IoT, and when I talk to the voices of vendors in my head I'm basically telling them "Stay out of my refrigerator, my furnace, my toilet and my smart doorlock that I'll never have." I just don't feel that anything relevant to the IoT is missing from my life. At all.

My guess is that for each person some small thing will make sense, which is sufficient to drive the costs down and the technology forward.

For example, good sleep is really important to me. So I used the Philips Hue bulbs and a NUC to build a smart home lighting system that behaves much more like daylight. When I describe it to people, quite a number really want it. Not bad enough to get my code off GitHub and install it, but they'd pay something extra for it. And I now see pre-packaged commercial products getting proposed, so I'm sure they'll have options.

The interesting thing happens when that cycle drives the costs a fair bit lower. Look at phones, for example. Smartphones were a weird, exotic thing. Then they were a high-end consumer thing. Now they're the default. A couple years back I went into a store looking for a cheap phone and asked for one without a web browser. The clerk looked puzzled and said, "Well, they all come with web access." I'm sure I could have ordered a dumbphone somehow, but it would have been harder and cost more.

So my question is: how much extra will you pay for your house not to be connected? Because that's the real test for me about where the IoT thing will end up.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#62

Post by pedrocr » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #2

I was flying from Dublin to Newark on Saturday on a United flight. At some point during our flight the entertainment system needed to be rebooted. When it came back up, the splash screen hit me with a huge amount of nostalgia. It was RedBoot with a kernel build date from 2004. Obviously this is the entertainment system and not something more critical, but it's telling. There is a huge cadence mismatch between softwar…

Exactly because of this I think Fred Wilson is spot on in saying expensive things will stay dumb and the smarts will be in the cheaper replaceable gadgets[1]. Cars have already done that with audio (bluetooth works reasonably well). Hopefully one of the video casting solutions will solve video as well so we can stop mounting smartphones on the dash and just cast the images into the car's screen.

[1] http://avc.com/2011/12/cheap-willl-be-smart-expensive-will-b...

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#63

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

rcraft wrote: post #45

theandrewbailey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the Achilles heel of the entire Internet of Things and smart appliance trend, and I think this will bite everyone bad. After 50+% of these vendors go out of business in the next decade, their products won't get updated, and people will wonder why their "smart" TV can't watch movies from whatever replaced Netflix/new whizbang video service. They won't be as likely to buy any "smart" thing again.

This is exactly why I prefer buying "dumb" tvs and simply adding chromecast/appletv/firetv, etc. Much better experience.

It doesn't really matter that much if it's dumb or smart. You can use a Chromecast with either, and refusing to buy one kind limits your choices.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#64

Post by jfaat » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

Cacti wrote: post #47

nostromo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously this is the entertainment system and not something more critical According to recent reports, the entertainment system is not fully isolated from the plane's navigation systems. However, Boeing has denied this. http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/17/us/fbi-hacker-flight-computer-...

That's because the researcher didn't do that on an actual plane. In fact it wasn't even a simulator, it was a virtualized simulator where he put the systems all on the same bus. On top of that the guy was only able to listen in on traffic. The entire story is bogus. The systems are isolated just fine.

Can you provide a source?

[edit] I've seen the claim made more than once in this thread without a source. I understand that the article was probably very wrong. I'm just interested to know if a reputable publication has confirmed this or if it's just conjecture.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#65

Post by zenocon » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

Cacti wrote: post #36

arca_vorago wrote: post #3

From what I understand of the Chris Roberts fiasco, their avionics systems weren't airgapped from the other systems. If that is the case and not just hype, then no fucking wonder shit like this can happen.

So it's clear, Chris Roberts was referring to tests conducted in a simulator , not a plane. In fact it was a virtualized simulator at that, and one where the systems were purposefully put on the same bus in contradiction of what you'd find on an actual plane. On top of that, his claims to affect the engine were bunk and the most he accomplished was to listen in to network traffic, even with such a contrived scenario.…

I'd agree here, and only add that if, in fact, he had accomplished manipulating command and control packets on a live plane, I doubt the FBI would have let him walk with a stern talking to and the loss of his personal computer effects.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#66

Post by onyxraven » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

The initial descriptions sound more like someone pointed a testing tool at the wrong environment, rather than a hack.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#67

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

tobinfricke wrote: post #48

josephmosby wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Air gapped" means that there is a physical separation between two networks (i.e., there's "air" between them). If two networks are physically connected, there is always a chance that someone could bypass any software security restrictions. If the two networks aren't physically connected, there's no way to gain access to one network from another. In this instance, the inflight entertainment network and the avionics n…

The phrase no longer makes literal sense in this day of ubiquitous wireless communications. "If the two networks aren't physically connected, there's no way to gain access to one network from another" is no longer true.

That's true, it's a bit of an anachronism. But everyone knows what it means.

Like skeuomorphism. Nobody uses floppy disks anymore, yet the floppy logo is universal for "save".

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#68

Post by philip1209 » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

I'm honestly surprised that critical software at the core of more operations-heavy companies does not go down more often. Possible causes range from a software bug to database master failover to a data center outage, but realistically there are single points of failure at delivery companies, airline companies, and more that could stall everything. I'm surprised this software doesn't break more often. When was the last time that UPS had delivery delays due to a software outage?

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#69

Post by antsar » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #63

rcraft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I prefer buying "dumb" tvs and simply adding chromecast/appletv/firetv, etc. Much better experience.

It doesn't really matter that much if it's dumb or smart. You can use a Chromecast with either, and refusing to buy one kind limits your choices.

You can use a Chromecast with either, but one of them can also spy on you without your consent.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#70

Post by krschultz » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #23

krschultz wrote: post #2

I was flying from Dublin to Newark on Saturday on a United flight. At some point during our flight the entertainment system needed to be rebooted. When it came back up, the splash screen hit me with a huge amount of nostalgia. It was RedBoot with a kernel build date from 2004. Obviously this is the entertainment system and not something more critical, but it's telling. There is a huge cadence mismatch between softwar…

There is a huge cadence mismatch between software cycles and capital good replacement cycles. How well would you say that Tesla is coping with this as a company? For that matter, what about Apple? I can't even imagine the number of security patches that have gone into the Linux kernel in the last 11 years. Let's take a step back and think about this statement. Isn't this insane? We know enough to be able to build som…

100% agree. What I'm really getting at it is that you need to have an upgrade strategy. Obviously these planes didn't. The military actually has a very good strategy these days simply because they were burned badly by this problem in the 80s and 90s already. I imagine the commercial airlines are currently learning this lesson.