DEF CON 20 - Hacking Airplanes - Brad Haines

[@pcramil]

Radar already goes down somewhat regularly for maintenance or other reasons. We have many backups and GPS is never the only means of navigation. In order to earn an Instrument Rating, you need to know how to take off in bad visibility, lose all communication, not see a thing outside your aircraft for the entire route, & guide your plane down seeing the runway only 200' off the ground. Before a commercial airliner takes off, the dispatcher files a flight plan. The pilots take a copy of the flight plan and receive a clearance while waiting on the ground and continually receive additional clearances & are told what to "expect." Should they lose communication, they fall back on their last clearance, what they were last told to expect, or what their flight plan was filed. Radar is not necessary for this because ATC is already expecting aircraft to be at certain places at certain times. If someone were to jam everything, it would be a pain in the ass, but workable. (Source: Commercial Pilot)

[@tylerr5285]

@@TheBo0m The video is very eye-opening and I hope Brad Haines gets the attention he needs. Totally, a good pilot can manage in a situation where the dang ol computer's on the fritz, but history has shown it's rarely just one thing that contributes to an air disaster, and ADS-B could very well be just one thing that adds to the list of "cause of accident".

[@Slothiz]

ADS-B Could just be the first point of failure. Other systems could even be infiltrated as well. Nothing is ever secure and it's important to realize that and plan accordingly. Especially with lives on the line.

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

I love how now Multilateration MLAT is now done on simple raspberry pi's and a few RTL sdr's.

[@bbugarschi]

i have to stop watching defcon videos... i'm becoming paranoid...

[@burntcharcoal3]

Bogdan Bugarschi let the paranoia consume you

[@daveb5041]

They will do nothing about this problem. The country doesn't act it only reacts.

[@renakunisaki]

Well that's utterly terrifying. brb hiding underground.

[@CommieGIR]

To be fair: Current ATC Radar for Commercial aircraft pulls the Altitude from the Altimeter and is encoded via the transponder. Then, you have TCAS, which encodes actual AGL from the Radar Altimeter to negotiate with other aircraft for collission avoidance,

[@jerseyshoredroneservices225]

The MIT Lincoln laboratory has an interesting article on ATC, Mode S, ADSB, etc. Google won't let me post a link but you can search for this phrase to find it "Today, Mode S and its datalink continue to enable the next generation of aircraft surveillance. The FAA's most recently mandated ATC system, Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B), no longer requires the use of ground radar to track aircraft at all, thanks in part to the foundation provided by Mode S."

[@MikeMandrill]

that TCAS thing at the end is scary "the pilot is seeing false information [...] on Airbus and Eurocopter it's tied to the the autopilot, if tcas detects danger, autopilot is gonna take corrective action" how could anyone have thought this was a good idea? A lot of unexplained plane crashes happening lately, how long until that kind of issue is properly taken care of?

[@ramiabouzahra]

Planes have a thing called TCAS so that they can see other planes in the area and if they get too close to another, one plane will shout "descend!" and the other "climb!" to avoid a collision.

[@tenebrasolanum4215]

TCAS is what they're trying to explain, it can be abused if you spoof a location. For instance if the location is right next to the plane, it'll move in a certain direction to get out of the way of that plane if you do it repeatedly, you can steer the plane before the pilot takes over.

[@regmigrant]

I think you missed the last few seconds of the video where he shows how to spoof TCAS and that TCAS is slaved to autopilot

[@prebenbj]

I think he forgot an important aspect. TCAS does not give resolution advisories (RA) below 1000ft, and some of the RAs are inhibited below 1550ft. It does not help if the altitude information in the interrogation is spoofed. The time difference will still be larger when the distance(altitude) from the rx antenna increases. The application of this hack is thus very limited and will probably fail and be discovered before it's able to do any harm. False targets will be visible for ATC. Mode A transponders on military ships and on recreational a/cs does give traffic advisory (TA) at a regular basis. Annoying, but not dangerous. Anyhow it's important that this is addressed in case there are bugs in the system which can be exploited.

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

@@tenebrasolanum4215 Look for the next Years talk, Defcon 21 All your RFz... it explains all of it quite well and even directs to this talk :D

[@ben11brown]

whooo. chills

[@tommeken16]

This iz so freakin awesome information!

[@queendomofethelpodcast4662]

I am curious if the same ghost planes or flight plan datasets could be faked to INMARSAT data?

[@zashbot]

I hope they've fixed this stuff since this came to light

[@yaboifet9058]

zashbot lol of course they didnt.

[@spydergs07]

That would make too much sense.

[@ebimonaca]

GPWS:HACK UP! PILOT:🤔

[@Nihil_Supernum]

Anyone else thinking about setting up one of those monitoring stations at your own house? I wonder what hardware I'd need to receive 1090 MHz, and how it'd interface.

[@Samo762]

all you need is the tv dongle they talked about... nowadays there isn't really any need to do that yourself as websites like flightradar24 most areas covered quite well

[@JJceo]

4:23 I believe the term they would use is "bovine" :D

[@FlubbedJohn]

This would only work extremely close to the aircraft/tower. Unless you have access to a radio station sized antenna to actually do some of the crazy ideas the speaker has mentioned. Aircraft use VHF and HF frequency's for a reason, they can travel over extremely long distances compared to a 20$ sdr device. Concept overall is true however in practice not that practical, unless military. One example is an aircraft IRS (basically GPS). On commercial aircraft they take time to align, but on military aircraft they are pretty much instant.

[@SuperibyP]

That is fucking terrifying.

[@MrDendor]

so my irrational fear of flight wasn't irrational at all...

[@TheFlyerX]

MrDendor Flying is still very safe.

[@6105boe]

MrDendor safer than walking on the sidewalk, driving a car, taking an escalator, stairs, elevator etc

[@JugurthaHadjar]

I thought I was off-line at 14:55 :D

[@circusboy90210]

ADS B is not a primary source of information for commercial airliners .So GPS spoofing would not cause a person to fly into a mountain period they still have other Telemetry to fall back on constantly they are never gonna get rid of that

[@jakeschindler1762]

What if there was some one hacking on the inside with the servers in their hands. They could do whatever they wanted.

[@retepaskab]

I don't think the autopilot is willing to do flight-threatening movements, this needs to be tested.

[@jerseyshoredroneservices225]

Autopilots have always initiated flight threatening inputs. usually happens when there's something wrong with the plane that requires continuously more and more input from flight controls to maintain altitude, attitude and or heading. the autopilot continues to put more and more input to maintain heading out to to Dan attitude but at a certain point it gets to its limits and will shut off. When the AP kicks off the airplane suddenly goes out of control. a common way for this scenario to develop is with icing. as ice continues to form on one part of the aircraft or another, the autopilot will compensate. Eventually it gets to its limit and kicks off. Then the plane is suddenly out of control.

[@JRmarksmen]

one name to add to this comment section Chris Roberts

[@bradley144]

Who's ready for another 9/11

[@jakobsiefert9429]

Pilots know exactly where they are at a given time, at which altitude and speed AND they know which move they'll be doing next. This is basic pilot chit 101 you can never get a license without

[@RAYNINGMAKER]

Erm... Fuck.

[@steamuser123]

if he takes off his fedora i might just take him seriously

[@DwayneCreates]

+steamuser123 M'lady

[@douwehuysmans5959]

+steamuser123 tips fedora

[@steamuser123]

Douwe Huysmans *tips life into trash can*

[@tsobf242]

Yeah hats are really important like that.

[@steamuser123]

tsobf242 you try going to a job interview looking like riff raff

[@circusboy90210]

You're right you're not a pilot period commercial airliners have their own radar they are not flying blind sir

[@agostonbazmajer1100]

They have a weather radar, which isn't used to detect traffic. The traffic is done by the TCAS but on Boeing the TCAS RAs are executed by the flight crew, so if you get a spoofed TCAS RA you'll only annoy the crew, won't be dangerous or anything. And ATC still has primary radar, it will be eventually determined that something is amiss if a lot of people report TCAS RAs in the same area in an unreasonable small time period.

[@officergregorystevens5765]

Fedora-wearing hype-peddling ...person. Not a big deal. Jam ADS-B all you want it won't change radar. Don't worry, we'll encrypt it well if we have to. Also you can't hack an aircraft's onboard systems through the wifi lol.

[@jakobsiefert9429]

Officer Gregory Stevens You can hack the entertainment system if you’re really good. Not sure what benefit this would have

[@officergregorystevens5765]

I hate how hackers or at least defcon presenters have to advertise how much they drink. Hur hur I'm so cool I drink. Wow. You're a big boy aren't ya? Just drink and keep it to yourself if you must. Annoying.