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All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

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Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#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 software cycles and capital good replacement cycles. Airplanes, factories, HVAC systems, even home appliances last for decades. Software on these systems needs to get upgraded, I can't even imagine the number of security patches that have gone into the Linux kernel in the last 11 years.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#4

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.

What does "air gapped" mean?

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#5

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.

What does "air gapped" mean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_(networking)

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#7

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.

What does "air gapped" mean?

Means that they are not physically connected to the other systems, that there should be no possible way to reach the avionics from e.g. the in-flight entertainment system.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#8

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.

What does "air gapped" mean?

Roughly, not connected in any way.

Re: All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem

#9

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.

What does "air gapped" mean?

> An air gap or air wall is a network security measure that consists of ensuring that a secure computer network is physically isolated from unsecured networks, such as the public Internet or an unsecured local area network. It is often taken for computers and networks that must be extraordinarily secure. Frequently the air gap is not completely literal, such as via the use of dedicated cryptographic devices that can tunnel packets over untrusted networks while avoiding packet rate or size variation; even in this case, there is no ability for computers on opposite sides of the air gap to communicate.

The case above is an example cited as a life-critical system: > Computers used in aviation, such as FADECs and avionics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_(networking)

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