Boeing 737 Blind Spot Could Let Hackers Redirect Autopilot or Sabotage Flight Plan in Under a Minute

Boeing 737 Blind Spot Could Let Hackers Redirect Autopilot or Sabotage Flight Plan in Under a Minute

A Boeing 737's flight-management systems can be tampered with in under a minute using a small hardware implant connected to an exposed maintenance port, security researchers have found, raising fresh questions over how brief physical access to aircraft is treated in cybersecurity. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Oberlin College built and tested a small hardware implant on a testbed made from genuine Boeing 737 compon…

Hackers Created a Device That Can Take Over a Boeing 737 Jet's Autopilot Without Anyone Noticing

Your fear of flying is only going to get worse once you hear what these white hat hackers figured out to do with a popular airliner. As Wired reports, a team of security researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Oberlin College created a device the size of a coin that can take over the autopilot system of a Boeing 737 and change its flight plan, not to mention tampering with key values in its takeoff and fuel calculations.  Ac…

This Coin-Sized Device Can Hack a Boeing 737

Security researchers found that in less than 60 seconds, they could open a hatch on a plane’s exterior, plug in a tiny device, and redirect the aircraft’s autopilot or sabotage its flight plan.

Coin-sized device can hack a Boeing 737’s Flight Management Computer, mess with takeoff weights, or even divert an aircraft — gadget connects to an easily accessible port that overrides commands from the pilots, uses in-flight Wi-Fi

A group of researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and Oberlin College have developed a tiny device about the size of a coin that directly attaches to an external port on a Boeing 737 that connects to its Flight Management Computer (FMC) and Multipurpose Control Display Unit (MCDU). According to Wired, this gadget, which goes into one of the ports that aircraft mechanics use to test and diagnose avionics, is small enough t…

Researchers Use a Physical Device to Take Over Electronics in a Boeing 737

Physical access to an aircraft has not typically been considered a cybersecurity risk – but it should be, according to a team of computer scientists at the University of California San Diego. In a paper presented Aug. 13 at the USENIX Security Symposium in Baltimore, Md, former UC San Diego PhD student Sam Crow showed that physical access to an aircraft – even for a brief period of time – would allow an attacker equipped with a custom-made hardware device to take over the communications be