hacking airplane | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

What could be more horrifying than knowing that a hacker can trick the plane's electronic systems into displaying false flight data to the pilot, which could eventually result in loss of control? Of course, the attacker would never wish to be on the same flight, so in this article, we are going to talk about a potential loophole that could allow an attacker to exploit a vulnerability with some level of "unsupervised" physical access to a small aircraft before the plane takes off. The United States Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) has issued an alert for the same, warning owners of small aircraft to be on guard against a vulnerability that could enable attackers to easily hack the plane's CAN bus and take control of key navigation systems. The vulnerability, discovered by a cybersecurity researcher at Rapid 7, resides in the modern aircraft's implementation of CAN (Controller Area Network) bus—a popular vehicular networking standard used in au...

Next time when you hear an announcement in the flight, " Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking… ," the chances are that the announcement is coming from a hacker controlling your flight. Dangerous vulnerabilities in an in-flight entertainment system used by the leading airlines, including Emirates, United, American Airlines, Virgin, and Qatar, could let hackers hijack several flight systems and even take control of the plane. According to security researchers from IOActive , the security vulnerabilities resides in the Panasonic Avionics In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) system used in planes run by 13 major airlines, providing a gateway for hackers which is absolutely terrifying. The security holes could be exploited by hackers that could allow them to spoof flight information like map routes, speed statistics, and altitude values, and steal credit card information. IOActive's Ruben Santamarta managed to "hijack" in-flight displays to change info...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

What do you do to earn up to $150,000? Somebody just hacks into airlines and sells fake tickets. That's exactly what a 19-year-old teenager did and made approximately 1.1 Million Yuan (£110,000 or $150,000) by hacking into the official website of an airline and using the stolen booking information to defraud hundreds of passengers. The teenager, identified as Zhang from Heilongjiang, north-east China, hacked into a Chinese airline website and illegally downloaded 1.6 Million passengers bookings details, including: Flight details Names ID card numbers Email addresses Mobile phone numbers Zhang then used this information to successfully defraud hundreds of customers by convincing them that there was some issue with their booking flights, and they had to pay extra fees, according to People's Daily Online . Moreover, the hack caused the airline to lose almost 80,000 Yuan ( $12,365 USD ) as a result of customers requesting refunds. The incident too...

A security researcher who was pulled out from a United Airlines flight last month had previously admitted to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that he had taken control of an airplane and made it fly briefly sideways. Chris Roberts, the founder of One World Labs , was recently detained, questioned and had his equipment taken by federal agents after he landed on a United flight from Chicago to Syracuse, New York following his tweet suggesting he might hack into the plane's in-flight entertainment system. In that particular tweet, Roberts joked: " Find me on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? 'PASS OXYGEN ON' Anyone? :) " The federal agents addressed the tweet immediately and took it seriously following the Roberts' capabilities of such hacking tactics. In the FBI affidavit first made public Friday - first obtained by APTN National News - Roberts told the FBI earlier this year about not once, b...

If you are a security researcher and fond of traveling from one conference to another, then United Airlines' bug bounty program would be of great interest for you. United Airlines has launched a new bug bounty program inviting security researchers and bug hunters to report vulnerabilities in its websites, apps and web portals. Bug bounty programs are very common among technology firms, including Google and Facebook, who offer you hundreds of thousands of dollars as rewards for exposing security flaws and errors in their products. So, what's different in United Airlines new bug bounty? The most interesting part of this bug bounty program is – Instead of offering cold, hard cash, United Airlines is offering air miles as the reward for yours . Let's see what United Airlines says about its bug bounty program: " At United, we take your safety, security and privacy seriously. We utilize best practices and are confident that our systems are secure ," ...

The U.S. government is reportedly using spy airplanes equipped with special military-grade snooping equipment to eavesdrop on cell phone information from millions of smartphone users in U.S, according to a new report. This little device, nicknamed " Dirtbox ", is being used to mimic mobile phone tower transmissions from the sky and gather data from millions of mobile phones, helping the US Marshals Service track criminals while recording innocent citizens' information. The purpose of the device is supposedly to track a specific target, but if active, all mobile devices in the particular area will respond to the signal. The Dirtbox causes smartphones to transmit back the users' location, registration information and identity data – uniquely identifying IMEI numbers stored in every mobile device, The Wall Street Journal reported . The name Dirtbox is given after the initials of Digital Receiver Technology, Inc. (DRT) , a Boeing Company subsidiary that allegedly ma...

Almost a year ago, at the ' Hack In The Box ' security summit in Amsterdam, a security researcher at N.Runs and a commercial airline pilot, Hugo Teso presented a demonstration that it's possible to take control of aircraft flight systems and communications using an Android smartphone and some specialized attack code. Quite similar to the previous one, a security researcher claims to have devised a method that can give cyber criminals access to the satellite communications equipment on passenger jets through their WiFi and in-flight entertainment systems. Cyber security expert Ruben Santamarta, a consultant with cyber security firm IOActive , will unveil his research and all the technical details this week at a major Las Vegas hacker convention, Black Hat conference, showing How commercial airliner satellite communication systems can also be compromised by hackers, along with the evidence of satellite communications system vulnerabilities that questions the standards th...