[quote]GAO investigators spoke to cyber security experts who said onboard firewalls intended to protect avionics from hackers could be breached if flight control and entertainment systems use the same wiring and routers.[/quote]
Who the hell figured it was fine for them to share!? Flight control and entertainment should have absolutely no hardware connections what so ever.
This is questionable. Even if you share the same hardware and routers, you would still put VLANs in to separate the networks at a logical level. Then it's just a matter of making sure your switches and routers are locked down properly.
[QUOTE=Lord Fear;47537967]Who the hell figured it was fine for them to share!? Flight control and entertainment should have absolutely no hardware connections what so ever.[/QUOTE]
Agreed. Mission critical networks should be physically separate from others, ideally even using a different cable route. This is how it's done on the ground, why are planes any different?
[QUOTE=UberMensch;47538702]This is questionable. Even if you share the same hardware and routers, you would still put VLANs in to separate the networks at a logical level. Then it's just a matter of making sure your switches and routers are locked down properly.
Agreed. Mission critical networks should be physically separate from others, ideally even using a different cable route. This is how it's done on the ground, why are planes any different?[/QUOTE]
Probably because it was cheaper to use the same cabling - if it is using the same wiring.
Why would flight control even use routers or even a conventional tcp/ip network, this doesn't make much sense. You could probably hijack the entertainment system and turn off everyone's fancy chairs in first class to piss them off because they share the same system that runs on a linux box usually
I wouldn't want to fly on a plane where the free WiFi and avionics were connected at all, let alone one with security risks as well.
[QUOTE=Saxon;47539156]Why would flight control even use routers or even a conventional tcp/ip network, this doesn't make much sense. You could probably hijack the entertainment system and turn off everyone's fancy chairs in first class to piss them off because they share the same system that runs on a linux box usually[/QUOTE]
Instead of spending millions developing a proprietary avionics system with dozens of proprietary integrated circuits, each costing a small fortune to design, you can spend a fraction of the cost and develop using more readily available off-the-shelf components at the steep expense of quality and security. Just hope nothing goes wrong.
It's actually quite scary just how much in the last 10 years has gone this route, especially devices that replaced things such as the more resiliant RS-422, RS-485 or current loop interconnects with generic 802.11 networking. It's extremely dangerous cost cutting.
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