Operations at LOT Polish Airlines at Warsaw Chopin Airport were subjected to a cyberattack on June 21, when the airline's flight-planning ground computers and operations were thrown out of whack. A total of 10 LOT flights were canceled and 15 more were grounded for several hours, affecting about 1,400 passengers.
This put the United States — and should put the world — on high notice that threats of a cyberattack on airlines are very real. That's precisely why the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration set up a high-level advisory committee to meet this month for the first time to discuss airlines' vulnerability to computer hackers, Dow Jones Business News has confirmed. The panel, consisting of plane manufacturers, pilots and parts suppliers around the world, met in private.
"The industry needs a set of graduated requirements," said the panel co-chairman, Jens Hening, who added that they'll pinpoint up to eight risk areas before coming to an agreement on how to prevent such cyberattacks.
The concern over a possible attack is high enough for Boeing to pay outside hacking experts — "red hat testers" — to see if onboard security software can be compromised and manipulated, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Mike Sinnett, vice president of product development for Boeing's commercial-airplane unit, said systems can accept only "specific bits of information at specific preordained times, and it is all preprogrammed." He also explained that "there's no way for the flight-control system to pull in something" from an unauthorized, outside source.
Experts add that onboard software has bolstered safeguards that would make a cyberattack virtually impossible. But that's onboard and in-flight. A huge concern is hackers' ability to attack airline systems via their ground networks, which upload and download data regularly.
Investigators are still looking into the exact cause for LOT's software failures and subsequent five-hour delays, but until they find the root of the problem, it will be airlines' job to stay one step ahead of hackers.
Advisory panels, like the one the U.S. FAA set up, can only help.
