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Accidents happen. Commenter below referenced Swiss Air 111: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_

Accidents happen. Commenter below referenced Swiss Air 111: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 They cite inadequate safety standards and an overheating entertainment system. It's easy to assume that government or the airlines wouldn't allow a faulty system to fly, but just like software it's those extreme edge cases that cause problems. Somehow I doubt hacking the entertainment system is comprehensively covered in the manufacturers safety check. It's probably a remote chance something bad would happen, but we can't say it's 0.

tptacek 9y ago
This keeps getting cited on this thread. The IFE didn't simply "overheat". It had faulty wiring. The coffee maker could just as easily have caused that accident.
- tlb 9y ago
  Lots of things have faulty wiring, but they keep working as long as their power draw is under some limit. Drawing excess power is a common result of software going into an infinite loop, which is a possible outcome of security probes. Half the bugs I notice in Chrome, I notice because my laptop fan starts running.
  - ricardobeat 9y ago
    A CPU overheating is still completely different from the wiring or other components heating up. It is entirely monitored, can throttle itself or shut down through OOB controls. It's more likely for your plane to be hit by a falling unicorn than you being able to burn something up just by the power of `while (1)`.
    - jordz 9y ago
      This genuinely made me laugh out loud.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    Sure. Hair dryers draw excess power when you drop them in a bathtub. Ground-fault protection outlets are supposed to prevent that. If they don't, the outlet is faulty. The origin of Murphy's Law was in a rocket sled project. This guy was strapped onto a rocket sled, fired down a track, and then subjected to strong braking forces. "If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong" didn't just mean "stuff happens". It meant, "you have to either make it impossible for it to go wrong, or you have to find a way that, even if it does go wrong, this guy doesn't die". You can't just ignore the problem as unlikely. It will happen sooner or later. You don't get to say "lots of things have faulty wiring". Things that can kill you had better not have faulty wiring, or had better be able to survive it if they do.
    - tlb 9y ago
      "More than 21-percent of GFCI circuit breakers and 19-percent of GFCI Receptacles tested did not provide ground fault protection. The failure rate in areas of high-lightening strike was as high as 57 percent ... when a GFCI device fails, it continues to pass electric current but no longer protects the unsuspecting homeowner from ground fault conditions." (From http://www.experts123.com/a/the-national-electrical-code-ground-fault-circuit-interrupter-protection.html http://www.experts123.com/a/the-national-electrical-code-gro...) And read this before dropping your hair dryer in the bathtub: https://iaeimagazine.org/magazine/2010/01/16/the-illusion-of-gfci-protection/ https://iaeimagazine.org/magazine/2010/01/16/the-illusion-of...
- SilasX 9y ago
  Yeah, but that's sort of the rub, isn't it? It's faulty wiring that won't, in practice, overheat unless you overload the server with (say) a port scan. So yes, the aircraft is supposed to be robust against any trickery with the entertainment system. And indeed, it's 100% their fault for installing the wiring in a way that would overhead under load. It's still pretty irresponsible to risk taking down the aircraft like that to check for a vulnerability!
  - bonzini 9y ago
    If a port scan can overload a server, it could also be a bug in the JavaScript code that runs on the clients. Too many AJAX requests and the plane goes down? I sure hope not...

tptacek 9y ago

This keeps getting cited on this thread. The IFE didn't simply "overheat". It had faulty wiring. The coffee maker could just as easily have caused that accident.

tlb 9y ago
Lots of things have faulty wiring, but they keep working as long as their power draw is under some limit. Drawing excess power is a common result of software going into an infinite loop, which is a possible outcome of security probes. Half the bugs I notice in Chrome, I notice because my laptop fan starts running.
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  A CPU overheating is still completely different from the wiring or other components heating up. It is entirely monitored, can throttle itself or shut down through OOB controls. It's more likely for your plane to be hit by a falling unicorn than you being able to burn something up just by the power of `while (1)`.
  - jordz 9y ago
    This genuinely made me laugh out loud.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Sure. Hair dryers draw excess power when you drop them in a bathtub. Ground-fault protection outlets are supposed to prevent that. If they don't, the outlet is faulty. The origin of Murphy's Law was in a rocket sled project. This guy was strapped onto a rocket sled, fired down a track, and then subjected to strong braking forces. "If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong" didn't just mean "stuff happens". It meant, "you have to either make it impossible for it to go wrong, or you have to find a way that, even if it does go wrong, this guy doesn't die". You can't just ignore the problem as unlikely. It will happen sooner or later. You don't get to say "lots of things have faulty wiring". Things that can kill you had better not have faulty wiring, or had better be able to survive it if they do.
  - tlb 9y ago
    "More than 21-percent of GFCI circuit breakers and 19-percent of GFCI Receptacles tested did not provide ground fault protection. The failure rate in areas of high-lightening strike was as high as 57 percent ... when a GFCI device fails, it continues to pass electric current but no longer protects the unsuspecting homeowner from ground fault conditions." (From http://www.experts123.com/a/the-national-electrical-code-ground-fault-circuit-interrupter-protection.html http://www.experts123.com/a/the-national-electrical-code-gro...) And read this before dropping your hair dryer in the bathtub: https://iaeimagazine.org/magazine/2010/01/16/the-illusion-of-gfci-protection/ https://iaeimagazine.org/magazine/2010/01/16/the-illusion-of...
SilasX 9y ago
Yeah, but that's sort of the rub, isn't it? It's faulty wiring that won't, in practice, overheat unless you overload the server with (say) a port scan. So yes, the aircraft is supposed to be robust against any trickery with the entertainment system. And indeed, it's 100% their fault for installing the wiring in a way that would overhead under load. It's still pretty irresponsible to risk taking down the aircraft like that to check for a vulnerability!
- bonzini 9y ago
  If a port scan can overload a server, it could also be a bug in the JavaScript code that runs on the clients. Too many AJAX requests and the plane goes down? I sure hope not...