- Apr 13, 2013
- 3,148
British anti-terror expert Dr Sally Leivesley said last night: “It might well be the world’s first cyber hijack.” Dr Leivesley, a former Home Office scientific adviser, said the hackers could change the plane’s speed, altitude and direction by sending radio signals to its flight management system. It could then be landed or made to crash by remote control. Possible culprits include criminal gangs, terrorists or a foreign power.
The chilling new theory emerged as the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airways Boeing 777 with 239 people on board became the biggest air-sea search in history. More than a week after Flight MH370 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Malaysian police began searching the captain and co-pilot’s homes as it was finally confirmed that the disappearance was a “deliberate act”.
Dr Leivesley, who runs her own company training businesses and governments to counter terrorist attacks, told the Sunday Express she believes a framework of malicious codes, triggered by a mobile phone, would have been able to override the aircraft’s security software.
“There appears to be an element of planning from someone with a very sophisticated systems engineering understanding,” she said. “This is a very early version of what I would call a smart plane, a fly-by-wire aircraft controlled by electronic signals.
“It is looking more and more likely that the control of some systems was taken over in a deceptive manner, either manually, so someone sitting in a seat overriding the autopilot, or via a remote device turning off or overwhelming the systems. “A mobile phone could have been used to do so or a USB stick.
“When the plane is air-side, you can insert a set of commands and codes that may initiate, on signal, a set of processes.” Dr Leivesley said the hacking threat was laid bare late last year at a science conference in China. She explained: “What we are finding now is that it is possible with a mobile phone to initiate a signal to a preset piece of malicious software, or malware, in the computer that initiates a whole set of instructions.
“It is possible for hackers, be they part of organised crime or with government backgrounds, to get into the main computer network of the plane through the inflight, onboard entertainment system. “If you have got any connections whatsoever between the computing systems, you can jump across and you can get into the flight critical system.
“To really protect your computer systems, you do not let anything connect with them and you would keep the inflight systems totally in their own loop so nothing whatsoever connects. “There are now a number of ways, however, in which the gap between those systems and a handheld device like a mobile phone can be overcome.” Last April, German security consultant Hugo Teso, who is also a commercial pilot, unveiled a way to hijack a plane remotely using a phone.
Addressing the Hack In The Box security summit in Amsterdam, he said he had spent three years developing a series of malicious codes on a mobile phone app called PlaneSploit that hacked into an aircraft’s security system. With the cream of the global intelligence community, America’s huge satellite arsenal and 14 different nations now involved in the search for the missing plane, there is also a growing belief that answers to many of the questions might lie in the private world of 53-year-old pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah. Police have been standing guard outside the father-of-three’s home since the flight vanished but yesterday saw the first extensive search inside.
Diaries, personal papers, computer files and the flight simulator that Captain Zaharie had built himself, and which he had proudly shown off on the internet, will all undergo detailed forensic analysis. Any data held on the simulator’s computer might give an indication whether the pilot had planned a trial run of events prior to the ill-fated flight to Beijing.
Police also began searching the home of the 27-year-old co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. He was described by his family as a “good boy, good Muslim, humble and quiet” although photographs have emerged in recent days of him inviting two attractive women into the cockpit during a flight three years ago.
The chilling new theory emerged as the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airways Boeing 777 with 239 people on board became the biggest air-sea search in history. More than a week after Flight MH370 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Malaysian police began searching the captain and co-pilot’s homes as it was finally confirmed that the disappearance was a “deliberate act”.
Dr Leivesley, who runs her own company training businesses and governments to counter terrorist attacks, told the Sunday Express she believes a framework of malicious codes, triggered by a mobile phone, would have been able to override the aircraft’s security software.
“There appears to be an element of planning from someone with a very sophisticated systems engineering understanding,” she said. “This is a very early version of what I would call a smart plane, a fly-by-wire aircraft controlled by electronic signals.
“It is looking more and more likely that the control of some systems was taken over in a deceptive manner, either manually, so someone sitting in a seat overriding the autopilot, or via a remote device turning off or overwhelming the systems. “A mobile phone could have been used to do so or a USB stick.
“When the plane is air-side, you can insert a set of commands and codes that may initiate, on signal, a set of processes.” Dr Leivesley said the hacking threat was laid bare late last year at a science conference in China. She explained: “What we are finding now is that it is possible with a mobile phone to initiate a signal to a preset piece of malicious software, or malware, in the computer that initiates a whole set of instructions.
“It is possible for hackers, be they part of organised crime or with government backgrounds, to get into the main computer network of the plane through the inflight, onboard entertainment system. “If you have got any connections whatsoever between the computing systems, you can jump across and you can get into the flight critical system.
“To really protect your computer systems, you do not let anything connect with them and you would keep the inflight systems totally in their own loop so nothing whatsoever connects. “There are now a number of ways, however, in which the gap between those systems and a handheld device like a mobile phone can be overcome.” Last April, German security consultant Hugo Teso, who is also a commercial pilot, unveiled a way to hijack a plane remotely using a phone.
Addressing the Hack In The Box security summit in Amsterdam, he said he had spent three years developing a series of malicious codes on a mobile phone app called PlaneSploit that hacked into an aircraft’s security system. With the cream of the global intelligence community, America’s huge satellite arsenal and 14 different nations now involved in the search for the missing plane, there is also a growing belief that answers to many of the questions might lie in the private world of 53-year-old pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah. Police have been standing guard outside the father-of-three’s home since the flight vanished but yesterday saw the first extensive search inside.
Diaries, personal papers, computer files and the flight simulator that Captain Zaharie had built himself, and which he had proudly shown off on the internet, will all undergo detailed forensic analysis. Any data held on the simulator’s computer might give an indication whether the pilot had planned a trial run of events prior to the ill-fated flight to Beijing.
Police also began searching the home of the 27-year-old co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. He was described by his family as a “good boy, good Muslim, humble and quiet” although photographs have emerged in recent days of him inviting two attractive women into the cockpit during a flight three years ago.
