The Federal Aviation Administration has asked The Boeing Co. to provide it with some proof that evil hackers on board a new giant 787 won’t be able to somehow take over the plane’s electronics.
The 787, which can carry 381 people (left), will be set up in such a way that passengers ought to be able to connect to the Web while they’re flying. Kinda cool, when you think about it, but the FAA is worried that “Because of this new passenger connectivity, the proposed data network design and integration may result in security vulnerabilities from intentional or unintentional corruption of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane.”
Existing safety regulations which the FAA normally enforces are not set up for a world where we can check e-mail and Facebook from 40,000 feet and so it has asked Boeing to show that “security, integrity, and availability of the aircraft systems and data networks are not compromised by certain wired or wireless electronic connections between airplane data buses and networks.”