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Crashing an In-Flight Entertainment System

Posted by kdawson on from the stress-testing dept.

rabblerouzer writes "Hugh Thompson, who was interviewed by Slashdot on the dangers of e-voting, now has a cool blog entry on how he was able to bring down the gaming/movie console on an airplane. He calls it one of the most interesting examples of a software 'abuse case' he has ever seen." Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics.

4 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Err by dxlts · · Score: 5, Informative

    No offense, but I don't think avionics are your run of the mill programmers
    I assume you meant "avionics programmers" aren't run of the mill. I hate to burst your bubble, but for the most part that's not true. I've been a programmer in the aerospace industry for 10 years. Seven of those years were at Boeing, doing (among other things) avionics programming. Unfortunately, from what I saw, avionics programmers for the most part are no smarter than your average programmer. There are a handful of really smart guys who do all the really hard (and high risk) parts of the code, and the remaining 99% of the programmers do the kind of simple, tedious code that you could (almost) train monkeys to do. Not surprisingly, most of them really aren't all that smart. I understand how you might have that misconception though. I used to have that misconception too. I remember when I got my first aerospace job, and I was really intimidated by the fact that I was going to be working with the "big dogs", the hardcore programmers who all had 180 IQ's, etc. I also remember the total shock and disappointment when it turned out to be just the opposite.
  2. Re:Err by colfer · · Score: 5, Informative

    SwissAir 111 went down because the in-flight entertainment & gambling system had been rushed into service, and due to its design overheated and burned down the plane in-flight. This was its design: a separate computer for each seat. The computers (presumably single cards) were located in the ceiling near the front of the passenger compartment. So were the avionics wires. The entertainment/gambling devices overheated, caught fire and the plane crashed near Nova Scotia. Greed. SwissAir is no more.

  3. Avionics programmers by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Informative

    Okay, I *am* an avionics programmer. Here's some background.

    FAA regulations categorize software in 5 different levels of criticality, depending on how a failure of the software would affect the safety of the plane. Level "A" software is reserved for things like the "low fuel" alarm, which could potentially knock the plane out of the air on failure, to level "C" for things like the cabin pressurization system where the pilots can take emergency actions to compensate, to level "E" for things like the microwave in the kitchen.

    (Beware: I gloss over a few details for clarity.)

    The higher levels of software criticality have progressively higher levels of standards for testing. In the case of level-A software, each individual line of code must be examined for correctness in the context of the rest of the code. Each line of code must be executed as part of testing and actively shown to be correct, and each line of code must be individually code reviewed by another engineer.

    At the higher levels of software, limit testing is required for all function arguments and if-statements. Multiple-clause if statements such as "if A and B but not C" must be tested for all combinations of the subject clauses, and so on.

    In addition to this, all avionics software I've worked on makes a distinction between showing erroneous information and showing *no* information (or, working incorrectly versus not working at all). If the digital altimeter goes blank, the pilots will notice and can take corrective action. If the altimeter is reading the wrong information, then that's a critical failure which could cause an accident.

    Thus, avionics software innards are heavily checked throughout execution to ensure proper operation, and any failure causes the system to immediately go offline. All function arguments are ASSERT'ed for correct range, all calculations are checked for range and accuracy, &c.

    The entertainment system, and in particular a game within the entertainment system, is almost certainly a level-E software component, and so is not required to go through such rigorous testing. The hardware has to be shown to not interfere with the avionics and that's about it.

  4. Re:Err by bigwave111 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, no, it takes more inside information than that. My dad worked for Swissair for 30 years and its downfall was actually the acquisition of Sabena and the contractual agreement created in the acquisition. At the time, it was a solid investment, but as the overall financial state of Sabena fell apart, Swissair was legally obligated to have to try and save them, draining their resources. The in-flight entertainment was simply a last can of gasoline tossed on an intensely burning flame.