FAA Worries New Jet Open to Cyberattack

[FiveO]

FAA Worries New Jet Open to Cyberattack


By Alan Levin,
USA Today
Posted: 2008-01-09 12:20:39
Filed Under: Business News, Nation News
(Jan. 9) -- The government is enacting rules to stop a new kind of cyberthreat: a computer attack that could compromise the safety of the much-anticipated Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The Dreamliner, scheduled to go into service by the end of the year, is built with unprecedented on-board networks and Internet access that could tempt a hacker to tamper with the jet, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency wrote little-noticed rules last week that require a design preventing hacker access.



Ted S. Warren, AP

Dreamliner will be pre-wired for passenger Internet connections. Computers will also control the jet's flight controls and monitor the aircraft's health, sending streams of data back to airline ground stations.

Such computerization "may result in security vulnerabilities from intentional or unintentional corruption of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane," the FAA wrote.

How much control a hacker could gain is unclear. Computers operating a jet's functions, such as steering, are made with layers of redundancy designed to make them impossible to tamper with.

Boeing has been aware of the need for special protections on the 787 for more than a decade and has already built in extra security, said Chuck Royalty, who heads the firm's computer security for the jet.

Royalty said Boeing is installing firewalls and other protections. "It's a very structured approach to ensure that we don't leave any gaps," Royalty said.

Avivah Litan, an Internet security analyst with Gartner Inc., said hackers are relentless. Boeing needs "to put up a big firewall or there will be a lot of leakage," Litan said.

The first 787 jets will not have Internet access, said Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter. The service will begin in 2009 or 2010, she said.

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2008-01-09 09:41:26

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