In response to reports and accounts of the recent United Airlines incident, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a warning to all airlines to be on the lookout for hackers. Below is an in-flight tweet from Chris Roberts, a pro-hacker and founder of One World Labs.
Roberts, an investigator specializing in commercial airline security, was taken into custody by FBI agents while waiting to board his United Airlines flight from Denver to Syracuse, New York.
He was taken into custody after posting a joke tweet that he would take control of the aircraft's engine system and crew-alerting system, which provides real-time information to the crew about aircraft operations, temperatures, available equipment, fuel flow and quantity, and oil pressure.
The computer expert tweeted: “I’m on a 737/800, should we check Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM? Should we start messing with EICAS messages? Does anyone need to ‘PASS OXYGEN ON’? 🙂 ”. This apparently caught the attention of federal authorities who confiscated Robert’s iPad, MacBook Pro, and storage devices after questioning him for four hours.
Roberts said he was disturbed by the actions of US law enforcement, given that he has demonstrated vulnerabilities in the avionics system used in modern planes. He told CNN that he could have hooked up a computer under his seat to view data from the plane's engines, fuel and flight-management systems.
And he's not alone, according to a Forbes article by Thomas Lim, head of security firm Cose Inc., who has been through airport security multiple times in recent years. On a flight from New York to Taipei, all of his belongings were searched at Anchorage airport.
United Airlines has now banned Chris Roberts from all its flights.
