The Abnormal Distribution

We distribute Thoughts

Category: Security and Privacy

  • Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities in Commercial Aviation

    The US Government Accounting Office has published a report into the US Federal Aviation Administration’s possible vulnerabilities to cyberattack. One of my respected colleagues, John Knight, was interviewed for it. (While I’m at it, let me recommend highly John’s inexpensive textbook Fundamentals of Dependable Computing for Software Engineers. It has been very well thought through…

  • Germanwings 9525 and a potential conflict of rights

    Work continues on the investigation into the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525. I note happily that news media are reverting to what I regard as more appropriate phraseology. Our local newspaper had on Friday 27th March two-word major headline “Deadly Intention“, without quotation marks, and the BBC and Economist were both reporting as though an…

  • Thoughts After 4U 9525 / GWI18G

    It is astonishing, maybe unique, about the Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 event how quickly it seems to have been explanatorily resolved. Egyptair Flight 990 (1999) took the “usual time” with the NTSB until it was resolved, and at the end certain participants in the investigation were still maintaining that technical problems with elevator/stabiliser had not…

  • Security Vulnerabilities in Commercial-Aircraft SATCOM Kit

    There has been some press in advance of last week’s Black Hat conference speaking of vulnerabilities in commercial-aircraft flight management systems and possible implications for the safety of flight, for example in a Reuters article by Jim Finkle from August 4. The article is technically fairly accurate on the claims made and the manufacturer’s response,…