Avionics News November 2022 - 37

WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW
CAN HURT YOU
W
S T O R Y B Y D A L E
S M I T H
hat do 18th century sailing ships and 21st
century business aircraft have in common?
Attacks by pirates.
Of course, the crew of a Brigantine, Frigate or Galleon had
the advantage of knowing when they were going to be attacked.
Seeing the Jolly Roger is a dead giveaway that dreadful things
are going to happen.
Today's digital pirates are a lot more subtle. In most cases,
you don't even realize you've been hornswoggled until they've
got their booty and are over the horizon. Blimey!
Seriously though, unfortunately, like in every other sector of
your expanding digital life, cybercrime in aviation is on the rise.
So much so that the International Civil Aviation Organization
designated 2020/2021 as the Year of Security Culture.
It's not that it should come as a surprise to anyone. As
increasingly more C-suite executives, heads of state, and
VVIPs take to the skies, sending trillions of bytes of valuable
information across the internet, cybercriminals are obviously
going to start more actively targeting their aircraft's digital
networks.
But who are these cyber pirates? Unlike the swashbucklers of
old, today's pirates don't have the courtesy of wearing threecornered
hats festooned with feathers.
The ill-doers can be anyone, from the attractive young lady
sitting across from you at the coffee shop to a disreputable band
of reprobates held up in a deep corner of the dark web. Each one
has a different goal for their data hacking intents.
As Matt Bartolotta, director of key accounts for CCX
Technologies, explained, there are several types of hackers
*
trying to worm their way into your network, including
botnets, script kiddies, malicious insiders, state/nation
sponsored, and black hats.
*
Botnets/large-scale hackers issue non-targeted malware
attacks such as common worms or viruses found on
the internet. These are dangerous because they can
inadvertently be brought onto the aircraft through email
phishing or contaminated thumb drives.
Script kiddies are typically novice attackers who rely
on shell scripts written by others. Although mostly
harmless, they can often unwittingly aid and abet
more serious criminals through their probing and
compromising of systems that could possibly cause an
AOG situation.
*
*
Malicious insider/whistleblower hackers usually find
motivation through a personal grudge in order to find
and expose illegal activity within an organization.
State/nation-sponsored hackers are appointed by a
country's government to access another country's
computer systems. These hackers will either retrieve
confidential information from other countries in
preparation for a potential upcoming threat or attack
or with the intent to keep an eye on sensitive situations
within the targeted country.
*
Black hat/criminal hackers are highly skilled and
innovative. They execute attacks for financial gain or
other malicious purposes.
Continued on following page
avionics news * november 2022 37
Avionics News November 2022

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