Interesting.

One of the advantages of the US Air Force is the modern avionics in the aircraft.

Wonder Russians and Chinese don't try to hack them in addition to US businesses and govt networks.

Who says they don't?

True.

I guess we won't ever know until we get into a war with one of these countries.

But there are a lot of countries which have been defeated in large part due to US air supremacy in various theaters. Surprising that nobody looked for a way to hack or hire Eastern European hackers to try.

Here's my scoop as an engineer, it's not possible. We still guide jets around with missiles if they go rogue into another part of the country. If such an aircraft was hijacked by a man, they can't call the nearest OnStar and say to safely guide it. They just do not have the systems in place to do so.

Most aircraft still run on cables, pulleys, and highly reliable computers that are way behind on technology. I say highly reliable considering cars cannot have that newest and the greatest GPU, CPU, and motherboard from Tiger Direct. It has to be reliable since it is carrying human lives, now apply that to an airplane. No, aircraft are not up to date with today's technology of wifi and satellite downlink of high amounts of data to the on-board controls. It is more than likely MH370 was 20+ years old running on the usual fly by cable and pulley system.

Boeing -- and parts that have become or were part of Boeing -- have been the target of hacking efforts, some of which worked ... at least for more mundane kind of hacking. Same goes for other aeronautical and parts engineering companies in this space.

Rather than requiring an Internet or other network connection for a disabling hack, there are other ways to design disabling features in the hardware and/or software systems that can work without an online computer to computer network connection

I guess if the Terminator movies were made now, they wouldn't try to go back in time to prevent Skynet from being made.

They'd try to hack it, though that's not as sexy as all the action scenes.

The best attack vector would probably be engineers or maintenance laptops which are connected to the aircraft control systems for diagnostic, repair and upgrades - similar to how Stuxnet worked.

(P.S - Hi! Long Time Lurker, first time poster)

The greatest danger is not hacking the plane, but hacking the navigational systems that the plane relies on. It is trivially easy to hack signals from GPS, FAA NextGen (ADS-B), and ACARS.

The good thing is the redundancy of pilots in the cockpit. They know what the plane should be doing and where it is going, and will notice things like bank angle changes and altitude changes.

The In Flight Entertainment systems are not permitted to be connected to the flight control and management systems, or else the IFE must be certified to the level of the flight management/control systems. So there's an economic disincentive to connect the two.
Plus in IFE WiFi systems are completely airgapped from the rest of the airplane.

All that said, I have seen hacking systems that can even defeat an airgap to gain information (I have not seen one yet to push information), so I will never say that it cannot be done. It's just going to be very, very hard. Especially as there are so many versions of the various FMSs and FCSs in the wild, so you would have to attack one specific block of one specific model, with one specific carrier's specs.

Thank you for your insights. It is reassuring to know that it would be very difficult. I would assume, however, that if a state-sponsored terrorist or well-organized AQ-type group devoted the resources to it, they would identify a specific type of plane and carrier, and then go "all-in."

GAO issues report citing cybersecurity experts on the vulnerabilities of airliners:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015...nk-to-hackers/

Yeah, I posted and it was moved to Travel News.

I maintain that this is 99.8% pointless fearmongering and hand wringing about "what could happen". Monkeys COULD fly out of my butt, too, but I'm not betting on it.

Yep. These systems are not connected.

Really I'm not into fearmongering but if what you want is downing an airplane then get an SA-18 and boom! Those things are frighteningly easy to get these days. Much more realistic than hacking into an airplane esp from remote.

I think you could hack into the airplane if you get to the right wires and those are not impossible to get to -- I remember reading how you could get to the satellite transponder from a cabinet close to business class on the MH370 -- but I would think that if someone walks to a cupboard, plugs in a laptop then the FAs will have a word or two with said person...

Edt: http://www.wired.com/2015/04/hackers...ssenger-wi-fi/ today.

Well then, this entire article is debunked, because as others pointed out, these systems are not connected.

It may be in the interests of the security experts to overestimate the potential for hacks.

There's also a lot of talk about self-driving cars being hacked and driving controls being used for nefarious purposes too.