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The article title seems like an overreaction to a really sad situation. We have to trust at least someone, and although he clearly had some issues (maybe recent
by aaronmck 8y ago
The article title seems like an overreaction to a really sad situation. We have to trust at least someone, and although he clearly had some issues (maybe recent), he wasn't out to hurt anyone or aligned with any groups that wanted to inflict harm.
Fighter jets were there immediately, people tried to talk him down, and he was lost. Nothing better could have been done all around. Yes, commercial planes could be keycoded or controlled in some other way, but I think most engineers in a controlled setting will agree this creates exponentially more day-to-day headaches than catastrophic situations it prevents.
- cncrnd 8y agoHmm I don't think it's that much of a headache to have some PIN code provided to pilots as an additional measure. These planes aren't cheap, even a small personal jet is in the low millions. A Boeing 747 or similar is in the hundreds of millions.
- h4b4n3r0 8y agoYeah, a freakin _ignition key_ would have made this whole thing impossible.
- Toenex 8y agoUnless of course as an employee he had access to one.
- h4b4n3r0 8y agoWell, require that only pilots have access to the key then.
- cookingrobot 8y agoOr let air traffic control diasable any plane while it’s taxiing.
- bufferoverflow 8y agoThat's dangerous. Imagine this remote control gets hacked and planes start getting disabled in mid air, or even while trying to take off. An hard to copy ignition key makes a lot more sense.
- Twisell 8y agoI’m not sure having a remote control kill switch on an airplane is the kind of backdoor that improve security (if any backdoor can, which I’d doubt).
- speedplane 8y agoThe current "kill switch" technology for rouge airplanes is an F-18 with a few Sidewinders.
- iforgotpassword 8y agoSounds a lot safer to me and sufficient as well.
- adrinavarro 8y agoAnd mechanics.
- pjc50 8y ago.. which they will promptly hand over to the engineers for maintenance purposes, just as people do with their car keys.
- h4b4n3r0 8y agoCreate a “valet key” which lets the engineer to do what he/she needs to do but doesn’t allow to take off.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoAirline engineering employees need to power on planes, fire up various systems to test, and even move them around. It's absolutely routine. All the reports I've seen seem to suggest that this was one of those employees. So it seems reasonable to assume that he would have had the PIN or "key" or whatever in this case anyway.
- Shivetya 8y agovalet mode for aircraft. of course we can never eliminate the risk but perhaps a two key mode similar to launch controls for missiles to do anything with a plane other than low power movement?
- acct1771 8y agoYou put so much (undeserved) faith in the missile launching crowd...000000 comes to mind.
- stephengillie 8y agoOther industries have controls that prevent simple passwords from being used. Who audits the missile control groups?
- paulie_a 8y agoThe all zero thing goes back a while when someone in the military was told to put launch codes in and defiantly made them 0. Because God forbid there should be any protection on the most deadly device ever created by man.
- donaltroddyn 8y agoWhatever system that you put in place would have to never (or very close to never) have a false negative during normal aircraft operation. One other commenter here mentions a simple ignition key would have prevented this incident, but there's been at least one major ignition system flaw in cars that caused multiple deaths ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch... ), and the consequences of a failure causing loss of control to a passenger aircraft far outweighs that in a car. Given the very low rate of unauthorised takeoffs of passenger aircraft, and that this case was an insider who may have been able to gain access to keys/codes anyway, is introducing introducing a new system to aircraft justified?
- ghshephard 8y agoThe articles I've read said indicate that a "Taxi Capable" employee would be empowered to start up the aircraft, so it's not even clear whether security precautions would be relevant here.
- bobthepanda 8y agoI'm surprised that taxi capable employees are left by themselves to do this kind of work. This could've been preventable had there been a second person in the cockpit as well.
- hueving 8y agoDoes this second person live in the cockpit 24/7? This guy got in an unoccupied plane.
- bobthepanda 8y agoDo programmers just ship code to production without a second person to review code?
- stephengillie 8y agoAre all peer reviews/pull requests equal? A lot depends on the size, maturity, and customers of the group shipping code. One-person side/hobby projects wouldn't have a 2nd person to review the code. A previous employer initially had a "Deploy to Production" script that ran every 60 seconds, copying the Development folder to the Production folder - to make easier their testing in Prod. But large publicly-held companies with more customers will often have auditors that require better controls over dev/test/UAT/Prod, and between developers and operators. Separation of Duties is essential to protecting Business Operations from disruptions caused by a single individual. There should be some sort of lockout that requires 2 humans to put an airplane in the air - at least for major airlines, and could be mandated by law. This could range from a 2-key fuel shutoff for the engines, to different keys on the outer plane door and the inner cockpit door, to mandatory wheel boots on idle airplanes. And part of this would be a very good key management system, possibly with many physical keys managed by an airport or airline "key desk" - or maybe through electronic key-cards, RFID chips or key-fobs, or a smartphone app.