Hijacking airplanes with an Android phone

linky

Whoa! Get ready to have your Android phones banned by TS Agents while flying.

An extremely well attended talk by Hugo Teso, a security consultant at n.runs AG in Germany, about the completely realistic scenario of plane hijacking via a simple Android app has galvanized the crowd attending the Hack In The Box Conference in Amsterdam today.

So this guy made an app that he demonstrates can control an airplane. While just a demo on a virtual plane. The same process can be used on a real one.

By taking advantage of two new technologies for the discovery, information gathering and exploitation phases of the attack, and by creating an exploit framework (SIMON) and an Android app (PlaneSploit) that delivers attack messages to the airplanes' Flight Management Systems (computer unit + control display unit), he demonstrated the terrifying ability to take complete control of aircrafts by making virtual planes "dance to his tune."

I don't know how true this is. But maybe we have a few pilots on here that can chime in and discuss how possible this attack can be.

Certainly is scary and I'm sure that TSA is going to be checking your android phone soon.

if it works on android they can easily port to apple so all phones should be banned now! along with recent threads about the cops being trained that phones can be turned into guns and tasers as well as phone giving you brain cancer and all.. It sounds like we need to ban cell phones... BAN PHONES!!! keep guns!!

reply to post by grey580


It is true, it has been on KTLA morning news. Scary stuff. The person Hijacking the plane assumes full control.

If you've ever worked on Android, it's just linux. With root access and a terminal, you've got a portable low powered computer made from the OS designed to be "for hackers by hackers" in the first place.

Not sure how his 'app' works as I didn't look into it, but if anyone was serious about doing this in a real life situation, sure they could program their phone. Or build a small arm computer for $25 that could do anything this can and more.

Seems a little fear mongery to me, I mean, surely the best outcome from this is to make the plane hardware less penetrable, rather than ban items that can be used to do something out of a billion other things.

Yeah, I'm sure they'll fix the planes rather than stick bandaids on everything, with the added benefit if pussing off even more people and creating even more animosity towards 'them'.

Originally posted by grey580---->I don't know how true this is

It's not true.
Creative journalism and lies.

They have been able to jam ADS-B, and send a couple of fake ACARS messages, (go google it) the rest is bs.

Since none of them are linked to the flight controls they can't control the plane that way.

Here you folks might enjoy this, maybe there some truth to it all..

All one needs to do is get a copy of something decent like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 or later and actually learn to fly a 737 or what have you to know this isn't true. There are tons of controls that all have to be operated just right to fly a plane. They all would have to be slaved to the same central computer - which they are not, and the app would have to simulate each control specific for each model plane as well as enough data to know exactly where the plane is, the heading, altitude, angle of attack etc in real time. That would take tons of data and memory no phone, laptop or even desktop computer has.

Airplanes are Not drones. Drones are simple machines like radio controlled planes on steroids. Commercial aircraft is infinitely more complex.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


I dont know man... Im not an airplane pilot and I have an android... for me its all about thrust, pitch yaw and roll and I kinda like the idea of having my own A380...

This definitely isn't true. You can't take control of any current commercial aircraft remotely. Communication of the majority of systems is hard wired.

If you knew the protocol for the aircrafts systems you could disconnect the relevant control computers and insert your own but it would be much easier to get into the cockpit.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


John, here the discussion is about sending information to the auto-pilot not actually fly the plane. If he can send a different set of coordinates to the auto-pilot then it is theoretically plausible. The auto-pilot flies the plane 99% of the flight time, even more than that so if you can confuse the auto-pilot you can do whatever you want with the plane