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

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#81

Post by vonklaus » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

Well, if 9/11 is any indication, commercial jets can deliver pretty destructive payloads. Avi Rubin summarized some hacks in his TED talk[0], where hackers gain complete control of vehicles. It is unwise to just spread FUD this early, however, if these systems bare any resemblance to cars (and it is likely that they have many of the same characteristics i.e digital control of key steering/speed/avionics) then it is possible someone has the information to control a fleet of missiles on American soil. Unlike 9/11, these people will not be the US government, and could be actual terrorists.

Who knows, maybe this is just a 16 year old who got accosted going through security and wanted to burn off some steam.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHHCvcCUOWU

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#82

Post by bloaf » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #44

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.

I bought an LG smart TV a while ago. It stopped receiving firmware updates after a couple years and is now way behind current models in terms of features--and, I can only imagine, security patches. I will go out of my way to buy a dumb TV next time.

Heh, I own a Google TV (from Sony.) It's pretty amusing to me that a Google branded TV is currently running Android version 3.2

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#83

Post by saryant » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

lucaspiller wrote: post #39

georgeglue1 wrote: post #34

Interesting, United recently added a pretty lucrative bug bounty program (a rarity among airlines) a couple of weeks ago. http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/Contact/bugbounty.as... It would be ironic if the bug bounty program directly/indirectly lead to this.

Except: Bugs that are not eligible for submission: * Bugs on internal sites for United employees or agents (not customer-facing) * Bugs on onboard Wi-Fi, entertainment systems or avionics

The onboard wi-fi and IFE are provided by external vendors (Panasonic, LiveTV, etc) and United probably doesn't want to pay for their bugs.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#84

Post by netizzio » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:41 PM UTC

It's interesting that the Wired article mentions the recent controversy about claims that aircraft systems can be hacked, but explicitly ignores the incident last week as having any possible relation to these events, where a bigoted employee denied a Muslim passenger an open can of Diet Coke because it "might be used as a weapon", while giving the passenger in the adjacent seat an open can of beer.

The response from United was unapologetic and absolutely disgraceful: https://hub.united.com/en-us/News/Company-Operations/Pages/s....

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#85

Post by antsar » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:42 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #76

antsar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not if it isn't connected to your network.

Valid point. But then you're left with a bunch of crap in the UI that is unnecessary and annoying at best.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#86

Post by rcthompson » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:44 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #76

antsar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not if it isn't connected to your network.

It's not too much of a stretch for smart TVs to start including cellular connectivity (and advertising it as "zero-setup").

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#87

Post by exelius » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #58

a3n wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can see "Check if I left the stove on and turn it off remotely" being a neat thing to have. But not neat enough to let a 10 year old appliance with no software updates and the capability to burn my house down be accessible to the internet.

Yeah, but chances are you won't use the functionality often enough to configure it in the first place.

That's the real problem with the Internet of Things: most of the things we own are not all that useful when we're not in close proximity to them. Thus, not only are users and manufacturers unlikely to update them in the future; users are just as unlikely to connect the thing in the first place.

Home automation through things like light switches, etc. has a use case, but those products have been available and Internet-connected for over a decade and we still haven't seen wide adoption. I recently priced it out -- it would cost me over $5000 to swap out the outlets and switches in my house for Insteon devices. And that's just the hardware; not the electrician required to connect it all or the time I would spend configuring everything. Home builders aren't going to spend that kind of money building this into anything but the most high-end homes -- the IoT hardware alone blows through the fixtures and appliances budget that most home builders allocate.

People want systems that "just work". IoT does not "just work", and none of the current or announced implementations address the big problems around configuration (namely, every house is different so every implementation is custom). And in some cases like a stove or a refrigerator, any amount of configuration is going to be too much.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#88

Post by wutbrodo » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:45 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.

I think his point is based on the (very reasonable) assumption that an equivalent quality Smart TV is going to be more expensive, which isn't worth it in general since you're not using the features that cause the difference in cost.

There of course may be realities of the market to cause it to not work out this way, but it's a pretty sensible assumption.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#89

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #56

stcredzero wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How well would you say that Tesla is coping with this as a company? For that matter, what about Apple? Apple just kind of assumes that you have the latest shiny, because why wouldn't you? This induces a phenomenon I call the Apple Turnover: when a software update aimed at new Apple things comes out and makes your old Apple thing not run so good anymore. Sluggish iPhones are the hallmark example today, but I was bitte…

Eh, I think Apple is doing ok with Macs and iPhones at least.

I'd guess the typical hardware replacement cycle for a computer is 3-5 years. My 2009 MacBook Pro is on Mountain Lion. It runs just fine, and the OS continues to receive security updates. Both 10.9 and 10.10 also officially support my machine, I just haven't bothered to upgrade. Rumor is that support for older machines is one of the areas of focus for 10.11. We'll see in a week or two.

The typical hardware replacement cycle for a smart phone is probably 2-3 years because of contract upgrades. My iPhone 5 is running 8.2 and runs just fine. 8.3 supports it as well, but I need to clear some photos off to make space to run the installer.

Looking at the entire Apple installed bases for computers and phones, Apple users seem to do a very good job of keeping up with supported OS versions.

I don't know as much about the iPad. At work I have an iPad 2 that is running iOS 8 and seems to work fine.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#90

Post by jfaat » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 6:47 PM UTC

saryant wrote: post #83

lucaspiller wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except: Bugs that are not eligible for submission: * Bugs on internal sites for United employees or agents (not customer-facing) * Bugs on onboard Wi-Fi, entertainment systems or avionics

The onboard wi-fi and IFE are provided by external vendors (Panasonic, LiveTV, etc) and United probably doesn't want to pay for their bugs.

More importantly, I think they are trying to avoid giving any incentive to hack a plane mid-flight. The policy also stated that criminal actions may be persued in cases of attempting to access these systems.