I dont know if this is interesting to anyone but I thought I would post it. Z feel free to delete it if its not appropriate.

Fortunately most of the airplanes we fly do not have the capability of being controlled remotely but they could be in danger if someone were to inject fake aircraft on a radar.

Here’s a few important facts: Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) has no security as was pointed out at Def Con 20 shortly before a hacker was able to inject ghost planes into radar.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/cybercri ... k-airplane

As I understand it, it's a hacker exploiting security weaknesses in ADB-S and ACARS, which apparently have pretty snappy network connections between the avionics units and the ground stations. The hacker was able to inject code back into the aircraft's system using this, and control it by spoofing (imitating) navaids. How the "real time control" of the aircraft is accomplished, it wasn't made clear. It kinda reminds me of Die Hard 2 though-- give aircraft bad instrument or navaid data and it's easy to make them crash.

Either way, it's a frightening prospect. The best way to not get hacked is to disconnect your device-- Apparently the people designing the ADS-B and ACARS systems haven't been paying attention to network security.

Instead of SQL injection, it's now ADS-B injection. Do we need IDS now on our aircraft?? Maybe Garmin will sell anti virus updates too. Dang it.

I read an update that the guy used an old simulator, and that this is another urban myth.

There was a really interesting thread about this over at arstechnica:

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic. ... &t=1201311