Another really boneheaded idea

[unixronin]

Aircraft hijackings are really pretty rare these days, right?  But as schneier reports, the European Commission, Airbus, Siemens and the Technical University of Munich are spending 36 million Euros to develop a system whereby in the event of an actual or suspected hijacking, controllers on the ground can remotely take control of the aircraft, fly it to the nearest airport and land it, with no intervention necessary or possible from the pilots.

I've actually been aware of this project for some time now, and schneier's reaction now is the same as mine was when I learned about it:  This is a really bad idea.  The situation in which it's intended to be used is so uncommon the benefit is probably minimal, but it opens up a whole new vulnerability -- because you KNOW that once a system like this goes into service, the protocols will sooner or later become public, the equipment specs will be leaked, the encryption protocols protecting it (pray there IS encryption) will be cracked, and once that happens, it will no longer be necessary for hijackers to get on -- or even near -- the airplane at all.  They'll be able to hijack any airliner so equipped, from the ground, and presumably fly it wherever they want by passing control to successive previously-placed ground stations.  Had this technology been in place and already cracked on 9/11, the hijackers could have gotten all four aircraft to their targets instead of just three, and none of them would even have had to die.

This is one of the most stupid and ill-thought-out flight-safety ideas I've ever heard of.  As pointed out in the comment thread in schneier's post, there is one perfectly simple way to prevent 100% of hijackings:  Physically isolate the cockpit on all airliners from the passenger cabin with an unbroken bulkhead, give the flight crew their own separate entry, their own lavatory, and their own refrigerator and microwave for their in-flight meals.

Of course, would-be hijackers could take the flight attendants and passengers hostage, and threaten to kill them if the pilots don't comply with their instructions.  But that's fixable, too, by allowing passengers with legitimate CCW permits to fly armed.  Hell, offer discounted fares for passengers willing to fly armed and intervene in the event of a hijack attempt.

There's one thing I think schneier missed, though.  Even if the system isn't cracked, this would open up a whole new ability for terrorists to DOS the entire commercial air fleet and ground all commercial travel world-wide.

You see, they don't have to actually crack the system.  All they have to do is convince the world that they probably have cracked it.  Every nation would have to order its commercial air fleets grounded until they could be certain the system had been resecured.  They would have no choice.  Can you think of the consequences for any government if a terrorist group announced that it had acquired the ability to subvert this system and take over control of any airliner from the ground, and that government alone decided that the terrorists were bluffing and did not ground its commercial fleet -- and subsequent events proved them wrong?

Comments

[arasirsul.livejournal.com]

One doesn't even have to go that far.

Indeed, hijacking airliners is largely a thing of the past.

See, once upon a time, one could hijack an airliner. The people on board knew they were getting a trip to Cuba or Gabon or Indonesia or some random out of the way location and they'd be held hostage until some political prisoner was freed or until GSG-9 burst in guns blazing. Either way, your value to the hijackers was alive, and you had a better than even money chance of walking away.

On 11 September 2001, that changed. Some idiots hijacked four planes and flew three of them into large objects. Note I said three. See, information travels fast these days, and the fourth one never made it to its intended target: The world already knows their chances are no longer even close to even money. If the plane gets hijacked, and the hijackers are allowed to do as they please, you will _die_. And so people aren't going to put up with being hijacked. We've already seen it: the fourth plane that day didn't hit the White House, it hit some random field in Pennsylvania.

In one swift gesture, Al-Qaeda managed to put an end to serious airline hijacking. You can no longer do anything useful with a hijacked airplane, so there's no real point in trying anymore.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much true. If deployed, this system could change that. That is its great danger. It would make hijacking feasible again -- technically more difficult, granted, but logistically easier than it has been in a long time.

About the one good thing I can think of to say to it is that it would make the current TSA passenger-screening system pointless. The odds are, the hijacker's not going to be on the plane at all.

[trebor1415.livejournal.com]

They don't even need to crack the system. Just figure out where the plane can be controlled from and take that over. It would probably require an "inside job," but it opens up a new avenue of attack.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's very true too. If you could secure the control tower, you could probably take control of every airliner within a radius of as much as several hundred miles. That could be catastrophic.

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

Aside from JD's comments, I also thought it was interesting that ... this was a plot device in the opening episode of "The Lone Gunmen". Someone builds such a device into some new airliners, and then someone else subverts it to try to fly one of those airliners into a skyscraper.

(only, in the episode, it's one of those government conspiracy things that's doing it, instead of a terrorist network... in case you couldn't tell the difference by looking at the two groups)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

There's a difference?

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

Turbans and robes vs black suit and tie. :-)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Good point. :)

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

There's even an example on film of why this might be a bad idea, depending upon your point of view: USS Reliant. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Reliant)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The example hadn't occurred to me, but it's a good point. I think they used that gambit more than once, didn't they?