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Subject: [ISN] Researcher who joked about hacking a jet plane barred from United flight
From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews ! org>
Date: 2015-04-20 9:41:29
Message-ID: alpine.DEB.2.02.1504200941170.13303 () infosecnews ! org
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http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/researcher-who-joked-about-hacking-a-jet-plane-barred-from-united-flight/
By Dan Goodin
Ars Technica
April 19, 2015
A researcher who specializes in the security of commercial airplanes was
barred from a United Airlines flight Saturday, three days after he tweeted
a poorly advised joke mid-flight about hacking a key communications system
of the plane he was in.
Chris Roberts was detained by FBI agents on Wednesday as he was deplaning
his United flight, which had just flown from Denver to Syracuse, New York.
While on board the flight, he tweeted a joke about taking control of the
plane's engine-indicating and crew-alerting system, which provides flight
crews with information in real-time about an aircraft's functions,
including temperatures of various equipment, fuel flow and quantity, and
oil pressure. In the tweet, Roberts jested: "Find myself on a 737/800,
lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages?
'PASS OXYGEN ON' Anyone ? :)" FBI agents questioned Roberts for four hours
and confiscated his iPad, MacBook Pro, and storage devices.
Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we
start playing with EICAS messages? "PASS OXYGEN ON" Anyone ? :)
— Chris Roberts (@Sidragon1) April 15, 2015
On Saturday night, Roberts faced more fallout, this time from the airline
itself. Shortly after passing TSA screening and arriving at the gate to
board a San Francisco-bound flight, members of United Corporate Security
were there to stop him from getting on the plane. They told him United
officials would inform him by mail of the reason within the next two
weeks. Roberts was able to book last-minute travel on a Southwest flight
and arrived in San Francisco late Saturday night, three days ahead of a
presentation he's scheduled to present at next week's RSA security
conference.
"Nevertheless, United's refusal to allow Roberts to fly is both
disappointing and confusing," wrote attorneys from the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, who are providing Roberts with legal representation. "As a
member of the security research community, his job is to identify
vulnerabilities in networks so that they can be fixed. Indeed, he was
headed to RSA speak about security vulnerabilities in a talk called
'Security Hopscotch' when attempting to board the United flight."
[...]
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