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Incident: Expressjet E145 near Cleveland on May 1st 2016, spectacular computer failure
Reader Comments: (the comments posted below do not reflect the view of The Aviation Herald but represent the view of the various posters) By (anonymous) on Friday, May 6th 2016 11:47Z hi guys, people is talking about smarphons and so on, but what about a tablet being part of the EFB? Can it affect somehow if it gets a virus?
So vulnerable.... By Tailwind on Friday, May 6th 2016 10:58Z Amazed and even frightened to know that a flight had to be diverted because some computer could not tell the pilot how much fuel was going into the engines.....
The other day another plane diverted because the computer told the pilot that runway he/she is seeing ahead (and perhaps landed last week) is 'too short'. Viruses By (anonymous) on Thursday, May 5th 2016 16:53Z I'm an aviation enthusiast who happens to work in computer engineering. Not a security specialist but I've done some minor work in the area.
Yes, a USB device can theoretically infect an airplane, assuming there exists a place to plug it in. Your everyday Windows/Android/IOS virus won't be much of a threat. But a jailbroken phone that is set to inject a piece of code specifically crafted for a single model of plane, by an expert on that model who knows of a vulnerability (or chain of vulnerabilities) in the aircraft's software, is a very real scenario. Not running a phone/PC OS does not protect you. Being a simple, non-x86 machine does not protect you. One thing we're taught (and it's proven time after time) is that all complex systems are vulnerable, due to architecture or bugs. I like the Stuxnet comparison, it would be much like that if a plane were attacked. And don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that airplane designers take security very seriously. It's just a very difficult problem. @FloW. By (anonymous) on Thursday, May 5th 2016 15:59Z The first A320s had the MDDU, the 3.5 inch floppy drive, which was later replaced by a USB port because nobody used floppies anymore. The way your airline probably does it is they give maintenance laptops/tablets which download the dataload off the Internet or USB, and then load it into a special port.
Viruses from cellphones? By BobLoblaw on Thursday, May 5th 2016 14:02Z The gullibility of people is simply depressing sometimes.
By (anonymous) on Thursday, May 5th 2016 13:09Z No casual virus is capable of propagating itself outside its intended operating environment. For this to happen, it either has to be specially crafted (like Stuxnet intended to infect specific Samsung's PLC devices which had to be connected to Windows environment) or the aircraft systems have some similarity (file system API, CPU architecture etc) with the environment where a casual virus is located which by the nature aircraft system is not the case.
The entertainment system is another case... @ Spike By PTC Bernie on Thursday, May 5th 2016 13:05Z "Autoflight", do you mean they no longer met RVSM criteria?
Re: No Viruses on airplanes... By pmk on Thursday, May 5th 2016 12:21Z I also think that it is quite unlikely that a device plugged into a USB socket (if such socket even exists) could infect a specialized computer.
I can think of two easy ways how an external (USB) device could infect a computer. 1.) If a computer is capable of booting from an external device such as USB and previously from floppies, a boot sector virus would take over the computer, e.g. after maintenance, the power is restored on the plane and the computer is rebooted. 2.) Some kind of "Autorun" is executed each time a USB device is plugged in. I would not expect any sane critical system computer designer would make such stupid design decisssions. No Viruses on airplanes... By FloW. on Thursday, May 5th 2016 09:01Z That thing about viruses (even if they are not doing anything) in airplanes is just a myth. The A320s that I fly do not have USB interfaces - they have two plug sockets in the right aft corner of the cockpit that can be used to charge devices, but those are just old fashioned sockets without any data transmission capability...I think there is a data loading interface that is used by maintenance (for updating the database etc.), I'm not sure but I don't think that this is USB either...are you aware that most of the computers used in airplanes are highly specialized microprocessors (because of their specialization they only have to be very basic...probably your smartphone has more computing power than an A320) - they are only responsible for doing one thing (f.e. optimizing pilot inputs and sending the optimized inputs to the actuators on the ailerons) and probably dump most of the data after every flight...I don't think you could anything as complex as a virus on these basic devices...
By Spike on Thursday, May 5th 2016 08:25Z Descending to FL280 suggests they lost autoflight capability, not sure how is that related to "a computer which provides information about fuel burns".
@ Olli By Jonas on Thursday, May 5th 2016 08:16Z Well, you are partly correct. They don't run Windows and - more importantly regarding smartphones that are plugged in - they don't run Android.
That being said, the viruses still get into the systems when infected devices are plugged into the USB port. The neat thing is: they don't do any real harm as they are written for Windows or Android. But understandably maintenance wants the systems as clean as possible so they keep removing the viruses continuously. By the way, similar things happen with computers that control parts of our nuclear power plants in Germany. Through USB flash drives the viruses get into the systems but as they are (for security and reliability reasons, of course) not inter-connected the viruses do not do any harm there, either. By Olli on Thursday, May 5th 2016 06:44Z Never heard of any virus in an aircraft. FMCs don't run Windows!
By (anonymous) on Thursday, May 5th 2016 05:59Z I heard on some radio program that virus-removal operations are done once a week on all jetliners. Reason: when maintenance and cleaning crews enter the cockpit, they will frequently plug their smartphones or tablets into the USB interfaces for recharging the battery. In the course of which, viruses from their personal devices will sometimes migrate into the aircraft's computers.
For those of you old enough to remember the "Missile Command" arcade game: it must be a lot of fun when at FL380 that grossly distorted stop sign bearing the words THE END appears on every display in your glass cockpit :) EICAS By Jimbo on Thursday, May 5th 2016 01:58Z Spectacular failure generally occurs when you are playing Donkey King on the EICAS screen and spill your beer on the FMS keypad. Happens.
"Spectacular failure"? By PTC Bernie on Thursday, May 5th 2016 00:32Z What constitutes a "spectacular failure"? HAL was pretty spectacular, but other than that, what constitutes a spectacular failure? Did it blow up and spit sparks?
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