Slashdot Mirror
Aviation Instruments Encrypt Engine-Monitor Data
kitplane01 writes "Airplanes engines need to always work, and are monitored by engine monitors. JP Instruments' engine-monitor units have begun to encrypt the data output of its monitors so it can't be read by third-party software. Whether this is to protect itself liability-wise or to discourage competitors is unclear. It seems the company is working on a fix, which may require a fee from users to translate the file format."
You should also take a look at Lexmark and how they used DMCA to sue Static Control Corp, an aftermarket inkject cartridge manufacturer. Earlier Slashdot story
You can break out the coded ACARS messages. Here's one example of how.
Typical inept Slashdot editing: the data is *encoded* (as the original AvWeb article states), not encrypted. Sure, JPI is an evil company with a history of slimey dealings as shown here http://home.earthlink.net/~timrv6a/jpi.html but lets be accurate about what they've done. If JPI (or someone else) was to provide info on the format of the encoded data there would be no news story.
There's plenty of software that will listen to the scanner via a sound card and break out the data, but I wasn't sure if anyone had decoded the blocks of engine performance data into anything useful. (Just the altitude/position data is good for a display like this.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
For example, there was a case some time ago where the propeller came apart in a commercial plane (this was not obvious at the time) and the engine vibrated itself to bits in a few seconds (THAT was obvious, once the pilots actually looked at the engine. Before that, they'd thought they'd just lost the engine in a more `normal' way.) The plane had enough thrust to maintain altitude after losing an engine under normal conditions, but in this case the destroyed engine had much more drag than a normal non-functional engine, and the plane could not maintain altitude, and eventually crashed.
The crash was bad, but controlled. Nobody was killed by the crash, but the plane was basically destroyed. Unfortunately, destroyed planes tend to leak fuel, and this one did, which promptly ignited, and ultimately about half the people aboard died due to the fire.
This was all described in a show about aviation disasters on the Discovery Channel. Maybe somebody else can provide more details.
Or, if a two-engine plane were to lose an engine in the middle of the ocean, that would increase drag as the plane would slip due to mismatched thrust, and might not have enough fuel to make it to land. Hopefully they plan for this, and provide enough extra fuel for this kind of emergency.
But yes -- pretty much most 2+ engine airplanes can maintain altitude and even climb slightly if they lose one engine in a `normal' way. (Exploding/disintegrating engines don't really count. Fortunately they're very rare.)
However, when you talk about private planes, the fatal accident per flying hour ratio is signifigantly actually higher for two engine planes than single engine planes. This is because a two engine plane is quite difficult to fly with an engine out, and this tends to cause fatal accidents. In a single engine plane, when you lose your engine, all you can do is look for a good place to land (or crash, if you can't find a good place.) But even if you crash, you're likely to be in control of the plane and while the plane is likely to be destroyed, you're likely to survive.
But in a dual engine plane, what often happens is that the sudden yaw as the engine is lost causes the plane to turn into a lawn dart, killing all aboard. Yes, a good and alert pilot can prevent this from happening, but mistakes are often made.
The right way to achieve that would be a digital signature, not encryption.
Or, if a two-engine plane were to lose an engine in the middle of the ocean, that would increase drag as the plane would slip due to mismatched thrust, and might not have enough fuel to make it to land. Hopefully they plan for this, and provide enough extra fuel for this kind of emergency.
Yes they do, its called ETOPS (Extended-range Twin-engine Operation Performance Standards) and it governs how far a twin engined commercial airliner can be from an alternate airport at any given moment, usually in minutes and reachable on a single engine within that time. Standard ETOPS times are 180 minutes for nearly all major twin engine aircraft, including the A330 and 767, while the 777 gets 207 minutes due to uprated engines and higher safety statistics.
Private jets are excluded in the FAA jurisdiction, but must stick to 120 minutes in the JAA jurisdiction.
But yes -- pretty much most 2+ engine airplanes can maintain altitude and even climb slightly if they lose one engine in a `normal' way. (Exploding/disintegrating engines don't really count. Fortunately they're very rare.)
Again, all civilian airliners are required to be able to loose an engine on takeoff, be able to complete the takeoff and the go around without issue and land again.
Well, yes, but OBD-II (On Board Diagnostics, Version II) is federally mandated, and the Society of Automotive Engineers has a set of standard codes for most every fault an ECM would detect. They also, however, made it possible for manufacturers to have proprietary codes, starting with 1. For example, if the oxygen sensor on my engine's #1 cylinder bank is indicating that the engine is running lean more than is allowed, and the ECU is correcting by running it intentionally rich, the SAE code would be P0130. However, my car, a Ford, gives the code P1311. Same exact meaning, but it's a Ford specific code. Fortunately for me, a quick search on the 'net found out what the code meant, but it wasn't in my book.
Fortunately, the Feds have said they cannot hide the definitions of codes like these as not only is it federally mandated that the diagnostics system be there, there is already a standard set of codes and definitions that works just fine.
In a nutshell JPI's owner has some vendetta against a competing company that was selling software to read and analyze the data from the JPI analyzer. JPI changed the format of the data output from the serial port of the device, and the format it was stored in the device's non-volatile RAM.
JPI had sold software for Palm OS that would connect to the serial port and display the data in graphical format in real time on a Palm Pilot. Since the data stream was ASCII text you could do the same with any laptop.
JPI had also supplied what at first they sold, but later became a free DOS utility called EZ-Save that would download the data and uncompress it to a comma separated plain text file. They also made available some Excel spreadsheets with macros that would turn the data into some nice charts for easy analysis.
At some point recently the owner got bug up his backside about some competitor that is selling a competing program to analyze the data. JPI changed the steam and the stored data on current products to use encryption and removed all traces of the utilities on their web site. Of course this did not affect the 1000s of products already installed in planes. What they were doing though, was updating the firmware on any that came in service to have the encryption. Based on that, I vowed I wouldn't send mine in for repair if it burst into flames.
Some excerpts from a aircraft owner mail list:
AC--
In case you see this:
A problem with the engine can take down the plane.
FAA policy is that plane crashes are very, very bad. Absurd amounts of procedures are created to prevent plane crashes. Liability for plane crashes can be massive.
The engine manufacturer can't rule out that third party tools would find different problems than their own; the whole point of you owning this third party device is that, as a pilot, you've made a judgement call that the manufacturer's supplies were insufficient. Your call is being overridden by an overprotective manufacturer, treating you as an enemy to be obfuscated against.
If you crash -- it cannot be ruled out that you might not have if you had this extra information. All the FAA needs to say is -- those who interfere with pilot judgement may face consequences for such decisions -- and the potential liability will outweigh anything else.
--Dan