Air Traffic Software Vulnerable to DoS Attacks
According to Andrei Costin, $2,000 in equipment and "modest tech skills" are enough to throw an air traffic control system of virtually any airport into complete disarray. The ADS-B system that is used across the world is vulnerable as it does not verify that incoming traffic signals as genuine.
Costin says that a hacker could inject flights that do not exist and could confuse an air controller station. Air controllers could cross-check flights with flight schedules, but if the number of phantom flights is high enough, there is no way that cross-checks would work. Consider it like an DoS attack on an air traffic control system.
Costin noted that rogue signals from the ground can be generally identified and ruled out as malicious signals, but there is no way to do the same for robotic aircraft, for example. He also noted that data sent from airplanes to air traffic controllers is unencrypted and can be captured by unidentified sources. Since this applies to any aircraft, it is in theory possible to deploy airplane tracking devices to track specific aircraft.
So...we will just ignore this issue and act like it is not there and eventually it will go away right? Yeah I didn't think so.
More than likely this vulnerability was revealed long time ago and reported to the affected facilities since he is a "Security researcher" and that is his job to find exploits.
Attacker don't need any help from Tom's.It's always good to know the vulnerability of any standards deployed in commercial systems
Why tell the world how to attack airplanes or airports?
Attacker don't need any help from Tom's.It's always good to know the vulnerability of any standards deployed in commercial systems
So...we will just ignore this issue and act like it is not there and eventually it will go away right? Yeah I didn't think so.
More than likely this vulnerability was revealed long time ago and reported to the affected facilities since he is a "Security researcher" and that is his job to find exploits.
If we keep stuff like this in the dark....no one will ever fix it (or care about it). Maybe they will think about making this a priority now to fix.
For such a thing, this should not last very long, and if you check the local regulations, you'll see that this kind of jokes can send someone in jail for very very long...
I'm glad someone besides me was able to point this out before someone read this and started freaking the F out....which seems to happen all too often.
Air traffic controllers are also responsible for updating the airline's Twitter page.
They're not. They use radio broadcasts. Anyone can transmit or receive radio signals. If they are unencrypted, you can understand them too.
Reading fail, eh?
They need some internets too you know!!
If Tom's Hardware figured it out, then hackers would've known months ago.
Every countermeasure against a security problem risk informing everyone what the problem is, and often times the risk is worth it.