Hasta La Gadget!

I suppose the headline says it all, and it is now down to the little details which should interest many an airline passenger. At least this lends some weight to the argument that one should ensure all electronic items, including smartphones, be turned off throughout the flight, as it just isn’t cool to be on a hijacked flight. Animalnewyork.com has “proof” that smartphones and airplanes are not a desirable mix when you have someone with the technical know how as well as nefarious attitude, where during a security conference in Amsterdam, hacker and researcher Hugo Teso showed off to the world how it is possible to actually hijack a plane’s controls from the ground with an Android-powered smartphone.

This makes things all the more creepier, as it shows that the hacker himself or herself does not even need to be physically present on the plane to do so. How did Teso perform this seemingly impossible task? Well, he exploited the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Report System (ACARS), which so happens to control the plane’s flight management systems, and lacks a whole lot in terms of security.

Teso said, “You can use this system to modify approximately everything related to the navigation of the plane. That includes a lot of nasty things. ACARS has no security at all. The airplane has no means to know if the messages it receives are valid or not, so they accept them and you can use them to upload data to the airplane that triggers these vulnerabilities. And then it’s game over.”

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Now this is a story that you do not hear every single day, where the robotics team from Mexico suffered a heartbreak, especially after their robot was stolen en route to the destination in a FedEx shipping truck. This particular incident nearly caused the team to cancel their trip to San Antonio, until a Good Samaritan group from Brandeis High School heard of their plight and decided to do something to help, once again proving that there is still some good left in this world.

Michael Blake, the head of the robotics team at Brandeis, said, “Their crate, which contained their robot, equipment and tools, was on a FedEx truck that was hijacked before it made it from Mexico over to the states.”

The Bronc Botz from Brandeis High School are now working alongside the Mexican team, and all should be in order in time for this weekend’s Alamo-First Regional Competition. Blake added further, “It’s been mostly facilitating them. They know what to do. They’ve built a robot. They’re a rookie team and we’re helping them basically providing materials and back up.” While the stolen robot took half a dozen weeks to construct, the team has just 2 days to build a new one, so all the best to them!

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