Slashdot Mirror
Crashing an In-Flight Entertainment System
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.
Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics.
No offense, but I don't think avionics are your run of the mill programmers.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
No kidding... It was in the late 80s on a new electronic scoring system they had just installed.
I made a trivial and totally unintentional mistake in the set-up (punching in
number of players, their names, etc) and it brought down the whole system.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It doesn't have to be an "attack", it can be something as simple as a stuck switch or a book placed on top of a keyboard. On an airplane, you have to consider the two-year-old who wants to play with the pretty buttons.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I'm not so sure I'd want to put my name out there as "the guy who brought down the computers on a plane". He'll be lucky not to land on the no-fly list, I think.
Care about privacy? Read this!
Ooh... so close. There are people that read slashdot articles. There are also people that post to slashdot discussions. I'll simply leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what the intersection of those two groups is.
But seriously, those who generally read the article have less of a chance of getting a post higher up in the discussion that those who just jump in (Whether they jump in due to a high level of comfort in the subject, or sheer bravado.) This means that people who post early are more likely to have their post read. They are also much more likely to get a response, as there are people who want to use advantage of the nested system and get their post to show up higher on the page. Also, early posts are generally highly moderated, which I guess can be sort of a thrill to some people. So, the system is self reinforcing. Bringing trolls into the mix greatly amplifies the situation, especially FP! trolls.
sure, it wasn't critical - and I'd hate to have him get on a no-fly list or get fined or be banned from that airline.. or whatever.
:P
But this isn't just some kid accidentally hitting that remote, changing things to 5, then playing.. or then realizing they can hit up a few more times.. and then playing.
This guy actually knew, in his mind, what was going on.. Not only that... at the point where things would go wrong, he actually paused, sat back, made the change that might make things go wrong and enjoyed the half-expected result.
That's intent, right there. If nothing else, he should be slapped around for making the rest of the cabin annoyed because their in-flight entertainment was interrupted for no good reason whatsoever - causing a flight attendant to be occupied with a task he/she should not have been occupied with, etc. etc.
If this guy wants to have fun with mucking about with systems, have him get his own in-flight entertainment system, or apply for a job at a place that makes these things / the software
That said.. yay that he found the bug.. I hope they fixed it now.
Holy crapshit. I think you've found the missing "???."
1. Steal underpants.
2. Short sell fruit of the loom stock.
3. Profit!
``Dam lazy programmers not using Assert() these days... :)''
Because we all know that the constraint that you got wrong in the actual code will be correct in the assert. Right? Right?!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I can't believe that people in the real world build systems based on such a piece of crap.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Wouldn't you want to buy Fruit of the Loom, since the victims will have to buy new underpants?
The space unintentionally left unblank.
Thanks for the explanation. Comments like that are why I read /.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."