Aviation industry looks to warn pilots of hacking attempts
Car cybersecurity presents a moving target, as I recently commented, and so too, does airplane cybersecurity. Reporting from the Paris Air Show, Andy Pasztor in The Wall Street Journal comments that the aviation industry is looking to provide real-time warnings to pilots about hacking attempts. Thales and Raytheon are investigating such systems with support from Airbus and Boeing, which could be tested on commercial aircraft by late 2018.
Pasztor quotes Greg Hyslop, Boeing’s chief technology officer, as saying, “The conventional ways by which we’ve protected ourselves in cyber may need to change” as threats evolve.”
However, Pasztor notes, “Large suppliers such as Honeywell International Inc. and Rockwell Collins Inc.—which provide cockpit equipment for many airliners—are skeptical about the need for such proposed capabilities.”
He quotes Carl Esposito, president of Honeywell’s Electronics Solutions Business unit, as saying safety systems are effectively impenetrable from the outside because of “encryption, security keys, and end-to-end verification” already embedded in the software, with flight-control applications already separated from cabin entertainment systems. In any event, Esposito says, given a real-time warning about hacking, “What could the pilots do about it anyway?”
Pasztor says that Raytheon’s cybersecurity business generates more than $1 billion per year in revenue and now wants to build detection systems that identify false or spoofed sensor readings from engines and flight computers. “But ultimately,” he adds, “it envisions sending some type of automated message to warn pilots if their aircraft is believed to be under cyberattack, an option that doesn’t exist for any airliner at present.”
