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by verystealthy 4046 days ago
It's important to put things to the test, but I tend to listed to people who are actually qualified and know what they're talking about. Even that RenderMan talk at DEFCON 20 came with a bunch of caveats. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, the TL;DW version is: Boeing and Airbus are not stupid, a 787 is not a D-Link wireless router and you pretty much can't get to the flight controls from the in-flight entertainment system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy3nXXZgqmg
1 comments
neurotech1 4045 days ago
As explained in the linked video above (from DEFCON 22), there is a device called a Network Extension Device (NED) which is a one-way gateway between the FMS and the IFE for showing the progress of the flight to passengers.
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verystealthy 4045 days ago
Yeah, but I think that the main message is that there are pilots in the cockpit who can easily override any weird input. Even if it is theoretically possible (hey, you never know, right?) to impersonate avionics and mess up with the FMS/ECU/EICAS, there's no such thing as a pilot going "holy crap! the plane is going sideways and there's nothing I can do!". I'm pretty comfortable calling this whole "hacking the engines from the in-flight entertainment system" fiction.
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x0054 4045 days ago
Why on earth would you need more than a simple one way API between the FMS and IFE to be able to show inflight progress. For that matter, why would it be more complicated than a simple serial cable with just the O pin on the FMS side, and just the I pin on the IFE side to feed information at regular intervals to the IFE. I have no idea how exactly the systems are setup, but off the top of my head I can come up with several VERY simple methods of insuring that the communication between the FMS and IFE is in deed unidirectional. If this story is true, I would be highly disappointed in Boeing!
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neurotech1 4045 days ago
Its unidirectional in hardware. The exact details are more complicated, but there is only physical wires for a one-way link from the FMS side.
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verystealthy 4045 days ago
Don't you have to call an API?
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x0054 4045 days ago
neurotech1 above says that it's unidirectional in hardware, so it's a moot point. But you could also do a simple relay server with API. FMS pushes the info to a "server" through a one way link. IFE would request the info from the server and displays it as necessary.
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