I just got done reading this cool article over at Wired about how the 787 may be vulnerable to a hacker attack. Apparently the plane is designed to provide in air internet service by having a network in the passenger compartment. As we all know from network design 101, what you want to do is make sure that an insecure network like the passenger network is directly connected to the network that all of the plane’s control, navigation and communications systems are on. Holy lack of firewall batman!!
Sometimes it amazes me that today folks still make network design errors of this magnitude. Thankfully they caught it before the plane is in production (can you imagine the terrorism potential?) and will hopefully do something effective to remedy this. I have to admit though; I’m less than impressed by Boeings vague comments of “there are protections in place”. I’d like to think that for something as critical as keeping a plane in the air that a more open approach to security (I’ve never been a fan of security through obscurity) would be adhered to.
Wes Noonan
http://www.netiq.com
