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It seems insane that all this code isn't just open source by default. No one's going to be able to rip off airlines by stealing it, you still need to have a com
by sushisource 7y ago
It seems insane that all this code isn't just open source by default. No one's going to be able to rip off airlines by stealing it, you still need to have a company that, you know, sells planes.
Keeping it closed seems like a full admission that "there are probably a bunch of bugs in here and we don't want people to see them"
- std_throwaway 7y agoIt's kind of the same reasoning why voting machines are closed source and can only be audited by authorized personnel.
- empath75 7y agoSo people can steal elections in peace?
- std_throwaway 7y agoThe point is that we don't know and we cannot check.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoWe do know that the "auditors" are unqualified to protect us.
- mehrdadn 7y agoWhat is that reasoning?
- basilgohar 7y agoIt's less hassle than having your shoddy and/or backdoored code plainly visible to the whole world.
- std_throwaway 7y agoTrade secret. Sorry, can't say any more.
- kjaftaedi 7y agoPersonally I think if voting software is doing much more than basic addition, someone messed up. If you write code that takes an input and increments a number, and you're worried that someone might exploit your code, someone else should have wrote the software. Attach a printer that shows the voter a paper receipt before the receipt goes in a box, and it should be able to prevent against most any electronic attack.
- avgDev 7y agoBecause by keeping it closed, it is safer. /s Most executives care about profits, security is simply not important. Even if an engineer explains that he needs more time to properly secure something, he will be asked to cut corners. Then, when shit hits the fan the executive will make a "pikachu face" and engineer will get fired for not properly implementing security.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoHaving met a fair number of top executives I don’t feel this is true. People at the top do care quite a bit, and put personal pride into their company being good. But all low level decisions are made downstream, and middle managers are far less personally invested. Reactions to bad press are reactions. Hard to say whether it reflects anyone’s reality.
- bsg75 7y agoLeadership starts at the top. If middle management is making bad decisions, the fault rests with their superiors.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoHmm sounds reasonable but I think not. Management is hard and information is imperfect to all actors. With a god like view you would probably conclude that there’s a variety of people who should be removed from an org for its health and performance. The top may be accountable for things, but I wouldn’t think it’s correct to blame them personally
- SkyBelow 7y agoThey are good at giving lip service but I rarely see anything more than that given. When it comes to budgets and hiring, one might say when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, then you see how much they actually care.
- AmericanChopper 7y agoThe real reason is that there’s realistically only downsides for the company. The public doesn’t know what “responsible vulnerability management program” means, but they certainly know what “major vulnerability found in Boeing code” means. So doing that will only mean they gain nothing, or take reputation hits. Open sourcing the codebase doesn’t mean that all it’s vulnerabilities will be discovered, and it’s certainly not the only way for a company to manage them. Out of all the options that are available, it’s really one of the worst ones from the company’s perspective.
- gouggoug 7y agoMaybe open-source software is today's standard, but I imagine it wasn't back when those airliners were first designed. Now, imagine they did open-source their code: I imagine those codebases are humongous and it would take months if not years for security issues to be found by the community. How do you make sure that a bad actor doesn't find a flaw before the community does and uses it? So open-sourcing sounds totally unrealistic to me.
- jakeogh 7y agoBad actors (APT's especially) dont want it open sourced.
- 3JPLW 7y agoSaid bad actors probably already have access to the source — or could get it if they wanted it.
- filoleg 7y agoI think that's the exact point the parent was making. They don't want it open-sourced, because they already can access it, and open-sourcing would only mean that good guys will have access to it too.
- MFLoon 7y agoI don't think this is a realistic depiction of the threat model of people who would hack commercial jets. Sure, state sponsored APTs probably could access it if they wanted, but none of them are in the business of crashing passenger planes. Maybe tracking them or grounding them or stuff like that, but they already have those capabilities through economic or bureaucratic or military power. The "bad actors" of concern here are the same types that have brought down passenger planes before - small, independent groups or lone wolves. And they are the ones who would benefit from the code being open sourced.
- jakeogh 7y ago
- izzydata 7y agoThere is more than 1 company that sells planes and writes plane software.
- phkahler 7y agoSo they would all contribute, which would lower costs?
- airstrike 7y agoThey'd lose the ability to differentiate themselves (only on this specific criteria, but definitely affects overall competitiveness), thus having to compete more on price, which is great for customers but bad for companies.
- volkk 7y agoi dont think i know of any airline company that prides themselves on the code they wrote?
- airstrike 7y agoAirbus. Not a matter of pride, but you don't want to help your competitors offer the same capabilities as you for $0 R&D costs
- jacquesm 7y agoAre you seriously suggesting that Airbus would rip off Boeings code? There is such a thing as copyright.
- airstrike 7y agoWe're talking about open sourcing, not ripping off copyrighted code. Would depend on licensing but in any event, once you start showing how the sausage is made others can find inspiration to develop their own code, at which point you can start getting into a costly legal battle over whose idea it originally was, whether certain algorithms are protected, etc... My point is simply that there's no upside for Boeing to open source their code.
- hanniabu 7y agoThey're relying on security by obscurity unfortunately
- ummonk 7y agoGiven that airplanes haven’t been hacked yet, security by obscurity seems to have been working...
- linuxftw 7y agoLack of evidence of hacking is not evidence of lack of hacking.
- DocTomoe 7y agoAnd you are certain that all the "faulty sensors" that come up every now and then are actually mechanically faulty and not some bad actor sending garbage data apparently coming from that sensor to avionics?
- petee 7y agoSurvivorship bias? Only having just learned that term, it sure seems to apply...of all the planes that have returned and landed safely, none seem to have been hacked; but there is no proof that a hack couldn't have already brought down a plane
- mayneack 7y agoWell, the complete set of modern crashes is relatively small, and the set of crashes with unknown causes is very small, so the number of crashes tied to hacks is probably even smaller.
- samuell 7y agoAnything that can create the proper incentives for keeping code at all levels secure enough. (Indeed, perhaps open source is the only realistic one, for newly written code at least). Because yes, it seems the problem is with incentives. If attacks on such things happen seldom enough, that will never trickle down into incentives for managers at all levels to prioritize security high enough. Then, somebody could argue that if it happens seldom enough, that is reason to not prioritize it that highly. But I don't think the actual risk translates into actual incentives for managers in a very linear, nor fact-based manner, especially when the number of occurances is very low, while still with catastrophic consequences.
- jacquesm 7y agoThat goes for every piece of hardware with firmware.
- starpilot 7y agoWhy isn't iOS open source?
- nxc18 7y agoSignificant portions are: https://github.com/opensource-apple/xnu https://github.com/opensource-apple/xnu Edit: better link https://opensource.apple.com/ https://opensource.apple.com/
- alkonaut 7y agoUnless you make MORE money by showing it than by keeping it private, why would they? There is every chance that some piece is useful for a competitor, so what you did was give your competitor some code they didn't have to write themselves. The reason to have code open source would be to get public confidence perhaps, but I doubt that makes it a net positive in their eyes.
- dclowd9901 7y agoQuestion: why would making the software open source make it any more safe? Do we really anticipate droves of engineers combing through Boeing's code helping them eliminate bugs (without some sort of bounty program)?
- adrianN 7y agoThe article shows that there is at least one engineer who looked at the code and found issues.
- tolstoshev 7y agoThe real reason more code isn't open source is because it would severely embarrass a lot of companies, because of how bad their code is.
- mentos 7y agoYea I wonder if they could partner with Microsoft Flight Sim and find bugs in their code from thousands of simulated player hours.
- MFLoon 7y agoNot that Microsoft Flight Sim or X-Plane aren't awesome and relatively high fidelity simulators, but I don't think that's a feasible QA loop, as a) they're not simulating all flight systems on a 1:1 basis, b) even if they did have a fully to spec simulation of the flight control software, it's still insufficient because the real thing runs on specialized hardware, which is not being simulated in flight sims of this tier, and most importantly c) the external environmental inputs are also being simulated so it would be of limited value.
- adrianN 7y agoLimited value, but also much cheaper than the testing you normally do.
- skissane 7y agoWould publicly releasing the source code to avionics software for civilian aircraft pose an export control/ITAR issue? (I imagine there must be some degree of overlap between civilian avionics software and military avionics software, and the former may be a good starting point for building the later.)
- Rediscover 7y agoYes. I worked on some of what is being discussed (main thread), and there were many extra pieces of documentation that I had to prepare declaring ITAR concerns. (ex-Boeing, OS+support code for embedded LRUs)
- MFLoon 7y agoI'm very pro OSS, but I don't think this actually makes sense. Other open source, non-free software is usually a general purpose piece of software expected to be licensed out to many users and run in a variety of environments, for a variety of use cases. The flight control software on a 787, on the other hand, has one intended end user (who is also the owner), runs in one rigidly controlled environment, with a fixed set of use cases. There's no benefit to the public domain, and avionics is such a specialized discipline that the set of people capable of doing useful error or vulnerability analysis on the software probably highly overlaps with the people Boeing is paying to do said analysis in a private capacity (as they're mandated to by regulations anyway). I just don't think getting a bunch of eyes of random, generalist security researchers on it would meaningfully improve the safety and security of the planes.
- WalterBright 7y agoKeeping it closed is pretty much the default behavior. One problem with opening the source code is then Boeing would have to dedicate a team of engineers to deal with every armchair crank claiming the software is going to crash the airplane.