Security News > 2020 > March > Fancy that: Hacking airliner systems doesn't make them magically fall out of the sky
Airline pilots faced with hacked or spoofed safety systems tend to ignore them - but could cost their airlines big sums of money, an infosec study has found.
The team, who presented their paper at the NDSS infosec symposium, found that while their attacks against these systems "Created significant control impact and disruption through missed approaches", all pilots in the study were able to cope and land their simulated aircraft safely.
Pilots in the study were exposed to false warnings from each of the systems to see what their reactions were.
All experiments were carried out in simulated good weather so pilots could use other visual references to double-check the ILS. Four of the 30 pilots in the study chose to continue with their landing anyway despite the simulated glideslope having been moved to a point several thousand metres down the runway.
Smith mused to El Reg: "If industry engaged with penetration testing on these systems and tried to fully map out what the attacks might be, what they presented to the pilots as, they should at least be able to give a list of situations that might come about as a result of an attack." He added that this could be used to develop situation-specific checklists, much as pilots already have standardised checklist responses for instrument failures.