musther - Slashdot User

Submission + - Qantas blames wireless for aircraft incidents (nzherald.co.nz)

Submitted by

musther

on Thursday October 09, 2008 @04:53AM

musther writes: "An Australian airline Qantas Airbus A330-300, suffered "a sudden change of altitude" on Tuesday. "The mid-air incident resulted in injuries to 74 people, with 51 of them treated by three hospitals in Perth for fractures, lacerations and suspected spinal injuries when the flight bound from Singapore to Perth had a dramatic drop in altitude that hurled passengers around the cabin." Now it seems Qantas is seeking to blame interference from passenger electronics, and it's not the first time; "In July, a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course".

Is there any precedent for wireless electronics interfering with aircraft systems? Interfering with navigation instruments is one thing, but causing changes in the 'elevator control system' — I would be quite worried if I thought the aircraft could be flown with a bluetooth mouse."

Comment But what's the problem. (Score 1, Interesting) 332

by musther on Sunday January 06, 2008 @02:20AM (#21929918) Attached to: Boeing 787 May Be Vulnerable to Hacker Attack

I've got a question. Has anybody ever (outside of a movie) managed to hack into a system behind a completely locked down firewall. This laptop has every port closed, with the exception of 22. As I see it the only source of attack is to try to hack in through SSH. Assuming all ports are closed, it should be impossible to get in, that's the whole point. So my question is whether anybody, in the history of the firewall, has ever managed to get in through a firewall like that? I don't see how it's possible, where would you start.

Just thought I'd challenge the knee-jerk reaction of "WTF, who would do that!"

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