Monday 29 June 2015

Is Your Next Flight Safe From Hackers?

Now that one airline has been forced to ground its flights, consumers are starting to wonder: is it still safe to fly? And if it is, what’s being done to ensure these hacks aren’t repeated?

Sebastian Mikosz, CEO of LOT (the Polish airline that was hacked), told reporters that this is a widespread problem.

“This is an industry problem on a much wider scale, and for sure we have to give it more attention,” said Mikosz, as quoted by Reuters.

Security experts are not overly optimistic about the situation.

“We see that it’s very easy — even some of the best, most well-funded institutions can have gaps and weaknesses,” Stephen Boyer, co-founder and CTO of BitSight Technologies, told Benzinga. “They can potentially ground flights because they can’t do the route planning or flight planning. There’s always some risk. I think it’s going to vary from organization to organization.”

Boyer said that he sees a pattern in the industry. When technologists are working on something new, they build the system to perform well. At this stage, security is an afterthought.

“We don’t [initially] build them with a threat model,” said Boyer. “Oftentimes we expose those threats later. These systems are enormously complex. I think they’re going to get more security now as people are turning attention that way.”

Rami Essaid, co-founder and CEO of Distil Networks, agrees that development does not happen with security in mind.

“We need a fundamental mind shift,” Essaid told Benzinga. “[We need to] think of the security aspect first and then develop around that.”

Until things change, Essaid expects to see more hacker attacks.
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