Hey, didja hear the one about the two pilots who fell asleep? No, not really, they were simply engrossed in the intricacies of a new crew-scheduling program that they were running, in violation of both company policy and basic common sense, on their personal notebook PCs, while otherwise charged with, um, operating a commercial flight filled with real livc passengers! I assume this is the kind of app that requires access to a database, and that this particular aircraft was equipped with Wi-Fi. I wonder - did anyone check the Wi-Fi logs? And is this the kind of app that could engross two experienced, on-duty pilots for more than an hour and a half, to the point that they ignored communications with air traffic controllers? I think not - fire their sorry sack o' sawdust asses and get on with more important matters, upon which I shall elaborate below.
I can understand falling asleep on a plane. I occasionally do so myself from time to time. I might have been inclined to forgive the pilots had they been honest; after all, we're all human, we need sleep, and these guys work rough schedules. But to lie about this is inexcusable. It's nice to see that the FAA pulled their licenses, if just for that reason. What were these bozos thinking?
Well, I have been thinking for some time about those very air-to-ground communications and a big problem with the current state of affairs here. No, it's not just that this traffic is analog and unencrypted. Rather, it's that it is, much more importantly, unauthenticated and error-prone. Since I spend so much time on airplanes (I'm wrapping the .11n tour today in Palo Alto, and then home for a while at last...), this is a subject near and dear to my heart, and, for that matter, the rest of me as well.
OK, here goes. It's possible for a terrorist (or simply a ham-radio-literate jerk) to fake being an air traffic controller. Just listen in for a few minutes, and then tell American 17 heavy to turn left, heading 245, and contact departure on <use valid but incorrect channel here>. The pilot will do just that and subsequently be out of radio contact, if only for a few seconds while the real ATC guys recover using emergency communications. If enough of these fake messages were issued close together in time, and with just a little planning, it would be possible to initiate a really tragic situation, and catching the perps would be difficult to impossible. Even authentic messages, however, are often hard to understand - just listen in on Channel 9 on United some time, and marvel at all of the "what was that again" back and forth.
It is not normally my purpose in these pages to help terrorists or other miscreants with their evil deeds. I am aware, as are many in my profession, of lots of ways to hack, disrupt, damage, and otherwise disable a broad range of computer systems and networks. But rarely can these actions cause immediate, irrevocable, and irreparable harm to innocent bystanders. So I think it's important to get the international air transport community off the dime, finally, and get busy with deploying a universal, digital, encrypted, and, most importantly, authenticated aircraft radio system. If the pilots we trust with our lives can outright and shamelessly lie, think of what evil really bad people can do.
Mathias is a principal at Farpoint Group, a wireless advisory firm in Ashland, Mass.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
Die Hard 2
This has already been handled. Bruce Willis fought this in Die Hard 2. No worries!
I prefer...
...a more proactive, less violent solution - except when at the movies! And I actually liked that one, although it was no where near as good as the first or the third. The fourth was OK as well.
Thx. Craig.
Post new comment