A group of researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and Oberlin College have developed a tiny device about the size of a coin that directly attaches to an external port on a Boeing 737 that connects to its Flight Management Computer (FMC) and Multipurpose Control Display Unit (MCDU). According to Wired, this gadget, which goes into one of the ports that aircraft mechanics use to test and diagnose avionics, is small enough to fit under its dust cap and go unnoticed during routine inspections. It then overrides the signals between the MCDU — the terminal in the cockpit that allows pilots to see and input data — and the FMC, the actual computer that controls the plane’s navigation, autopilot, performance calculations, and more.
The idea began when researchers were experimenting with hacking cars remotely in the mid-to-late 2010s, when they wondered if aircraft could be vulnerable to these types of attacks as well. Since an entire commercial aircraft is quite expensive, the group settled on looking for bargain-bin used aircraft parts until they were finally able to build a complete avionics stack to do their experiments on. Another UCSD professor, Aaron Schulman, was working on a different research project about credit card skimmers when the group realized that the communication bus that some skimmers were tapping into to steal payment information could potentially work similarly on a jet. “We realized that it's a reasonable threat for someone to plug a device into a bus and read stuff off of it and potentially even gain control of it,” Schulman told Wired. “We were like, ‘Wait a minute, we’ve got to rethink everything.’”
