Re: Hacker threat seen as overdone

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: Russell Coker <russell () coker com au>
Cc: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>

On Fri, 27 Dec 2002 13:12, InfoSec News wrote:
> I particularly despise Sen Shumer (D-NY) who believes that if someone
> hacked the FAA, airplanes would fall from the sky. Good ol' Bud
> forgets that planes have a really good backup system called "pilot"
> and "co-pilot" and that a sudden loss of FAA systems probably won't
> have planes crashing....after all, the systems are so old anyway that
> they go up and down like a yo-yo, and most commercial pilots have had
> to deal with that 'feature' of air travel.

The fact that outdated air-traffic-control systems crash regularly is
disturbing but not shocking.

However I would imagine that the results of such crashes would be
mostly boolean in nature, either you have it working mostly correctly
or you don't have it at all (and know that you don't have it).

Wouldn't a ATC system that is being operated with malicious intent to
display subtly incorrect data in a way that makes it look good be far
more dangerous than a ATC system that just dies randomly?

-- 
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