When airport security measures researcher Chris Roberts tweeted about his power to hack the in - cabin dominance system of rules aboard his Boeing 747 flight of stairs , he in all probability was n’t anticipating the quip would get him detained by the Feds . Only some jokes , the FBI does n’t find oneself very curious .
https://twitter.com/embed/status/588433855184375808
The tweet may be rather nonmeaningful to the medium Joe , but the US government officials monitoring Roberts ’s Twitter account pluck up on the denotation to theEngine show and Crew Alerting System(EICAS ) , a critical in - flying control system . Roberts was interview by FBI agents for four hours Wednesday evening upon comer in Syracuse , New York . They also confiscate his laptop , iPad , hard crusade , and other information processing system gear for further investigation into potential illicit activities .
The sarcasm here is that Roberts , the founder and Chief Technology Officer of the certificate inquiry firmOne World Labs , has been issuing warnings about the security vulnerability of commercial-grade planes for years , and , on the very eve of his alarming tweet , was scheduled to give a talk on said vulnerabilities to an interview of law enforcement functionary .
As Roberts toldother sources , anyone can plug a laptop computer into a box underneath his or her rump and get at critical carpenter’s plane ascendence , including the engine and cabin lighting . He ’s tested the hypothesis out on over a dozen flights , connecting his own computer to the box seat under his seat and consider sensitive avionics information admit the drive control and trajectory management systems .
In an consultation withCNN money , Roberts acknowledge that the cavalier tweet was “ probably a piddling more straight-from-the-shoulder than I should have been , ” but expressed deep foiling that his warnings have precipitate on deaf ears . plane companies , he says , have n’t yet see the lessons of engineering business firm like Microsoft about how to properly react to security department vulnerabilities let out by investigator .
“ It feels like this [ airline ] industry is going through the same issues , ” Roberts told The Security Ledger . “ The trouble is , if I develop a F5 machine or a Cisco twist , I ’m not harming anybody . I screw around with an plane , I ’m taking 100 to 400 people out of the sky and you ’re not recuperate from that . ”
Which is to say , peradventure we ought to start accept Roberts ’s word of advice badly , and sooner rather than later . The FBI can chase down security researchers all it want , but not everyone who verbalise about hacking planes is joke around . [ The Security Ledger ]
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