Is It Possible for Passengers to Hack Commercial Aircraft - Essay Example

For a hacker to succeed in his or her endeavors, he or she has to possess adequate skills to penetrate networks. Basically, they have to exploit weak links within secured systems to enable them induce their ill-fated viruses that will enable them access to information, override protocols, destroy data or even allow them to have full control of the hacked system remotely (zetter, hackers could comandeer new planes through passenger wi-fi, 2015). Back to my question, is it possible for passengers to hack into commercial aircrafts systems?

To answer that, it is important to understand its system better for vulnerabilities. In an ease to be more competitive in the market, quite a number of airlines today offer internet connectivity through systems called in-flight Wi-Fi. The working of this system is that passengers connect their devices through Wi-Fi inbuilt in mobile devices to the Wi-Fi router in the plane, which connects their devices to the internet. This feature is currently in service in a large number of united airlines planes among other airlines.

This aircraft feature provides a potential threat to attack from hackers. A plane has a system known as the avionics system, which controls various systems in an aircraft including flight controls and even the autopilot feature in planes. Here is where the risk comes in. the Wi-Fi system that connects passengers to the web is connected to the avionics systems mentioned above separated by a firewall security system. Many might think that hacking may be prevented by the availability of a strong firewall system yet firewalls are not impenetrable.

Back in the year 2013, the Federal Reserve Bank website was hacked by an unknown hacker posting a link on a third party website which allowed users to download the stolen contact information from the banks’ website (zetter, is ti posible for passengers to hack comercial