The officials from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) were not at all happy about what they were hearing. An unshaven 32-year-old from Spain, his hair pulled back in a ponytail, was talking about cockpit computers and their weaknesses and security loopholes. Specifically, he was telling the EASA officials how he had managed to buy original parts from aviation suppliers on Ebay for just a few hundred dollars. His goal was to simulate the data exchange between current passenger-jet models and air-traffic controllers on the ground in order to search for possible backdoors. His search was successful. Very successful.
The Spaniard’s presentation took place two years ago in an EADS conference room looking over the rooftops of Cologne. He had been invited after, in accordance with the hacker ethic, he had notified the agency that he was planning to release the results of his years-long study at a hacker conference. Engineers from airlines and airplane manufacturers were also following the Spaniard’s presentation via video. After he had finished, he recalls, they all wanted to know the same thing: “You aren’t really planning on making all of that public, are you?”
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