United States Department of Homeland Security shortly termed as DHS has issued a nationwide warning to those who own private air crafts and small jets. The DHS states that these small aircraft can easily be hacked by threat actors who get physical access by any chance.
Security experts from DHS say that aircrafts can be remotely controlled by hackers if they could succeed in installing manipulatory devices in the navigational systems of airplanes causing disturbances to the telemetry potentially leading to loss of control of the plane by the pilot.
The US-CERT advisory issued on July 30th this year states that those having physical access to the aeroplane could attach a device to the avionics CAN-BUS which could thereafter lead to manipulation of data like incorrect altitude readings, air-speeds, compass false reading, false telemetry readings and such- giving false estimates to the pilots which could lead to serious consequences like deviation from the actual Course and also crash(in some cases).
To mitigate the threats, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is urging aircraft owners to restrict access to planes. At the same time, aircraft manufacturers are being requested to implement risk mitigation measures like segregation, white-listing, and filtering features in all future aircraft so that the CAN Bus Networks on the aircraft can be isolated from physical attack vectors.
So, does this apply to the Federal aircraft which carries the United States President i.e Air Force One.
Well, DHS doesn’t like to comment on the issue as it can erupt fake media reports which could affect the day to day security operations of the current 45th US President Donald Trump.
Orion Cassetto, the Product Marketing Director of Exabeam says that the latest alert should serve as a reminder to the entire aviation industry which is facing security challenges with modern connectivity.
