Boeing’s 747-400 aircraft, first introduced in 1988, still receives critical software updates via 3.5-inch diskettes. The register reports that security researchers at Pen Test Partners recently gained access to a British Airways 747 after the airline decided to retire its fleet after a blast traveling during the coronavirus pandemic. The team was able to inspect the entire avionics bay under the passenger deck, with its data center-like array of modular black boxes performing various functions for the aircraft.
Pen Test Partners discovered a 3.5-inch floppy disk in the cockpit, which is used to load important navigation databases. It is a database that needs to be updated every 28 days, and an engineer visits every month with the latest updates.
While it may sound surprising that 3.5-inch floppy disks are still in use on aircraft today, many of Boeing’s 737s have also been using floppy disks for years to load avionics software. The databases on these disks are getting bigger and bigger, according to a 2015 report by Aviation Today. Some airlines have moved away from using floppy disks, but others are stuck with engineers trying every month to sit down and load eight floppies with updates to airports, flight paths, runways, and more.
The 747-minute video tour of the 747 (above) is a fascinating insight into the parts of the airplane you’ll never see, especially on a decades-old airline. The tournament is part of this year’s virtual Def Con conference, the largest ‘hacker conference’ in the US. As modern aircraft rely on increasingly sober technology, safety researchers are becoming increasingly interested in how aircraft prevent passengers from interfering with flights.
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Safety is especially relevant when it comes to in-flight entertainment systems. A cybersecurity professor discovered a buffer overflow operation aboard a British Airways flight last year. The professor was able to use a USB mouse to enter long strings of text into an in-flight chat app, crashing the entire in-flight entertainment system in front of his seat. Security researchers are still on the hunt for vulnerabilities that could allow them to communicate with flight systems from publicly accessible parts of aircraft.
A focus on safety is even more important for the latest aircraft. Modern aircraft such as Boeing’s 777X and 787 use fiber optic networks, where all avionics in this network plug and are controlled by a few computers running flight-critical software. It’s more of a traditional network like the one you find in an office building, and some of the latest pilots even get software updates over the air. However, the software that powers modern aircraft is not always reliable. Boeing simply resumed production of its troubled 737 Max aircraft, after software glitches led to two fatal crashes that killed a total of 346 passengers and crew.
Despite obtaining modern technology, it has not stopped floppy disks from sticking to other sectors. The U.S. Department of Defense ended up using 8-inch diskettes to coordinate the country’s nuclear troops in October, and the International Space Station is full of diskettes.
