Android Smartphone used to hijack an airplane

LONDON: It is possible to hack an entire plane using an Android smartphone, it has emerged.

Security researcher Hugo Teso was able to ‘hijack’ the systems to feed false navigation information to a simulated jet that made it change course.

Teso built his simulator using spare parts from real jets for sale on the eBay auction site.

The loopholes in the flight management system were detailed by Teso during a presentation to the Hack In The Box conference in Amsterdam.

Teso, who is also a qualified commercial pilot, said he had spent the past four years investigating the many different computer and data systems found on aircraft, which help them fly and navigate safely.

Teso set out to find a way to subvert the flight management systems (FMS) found on many different aircraft, and planned to feed them fake or booby-trapped data via well-known radio communication systems.

Old aviation equipment was bought via eBay to help Teso interrogate the code these systems ran, the report said.

This hardware was used to build a simulated aircraft that ran many of the systems found on commercial aircraft and could swap data via radio with the air traffic and navigation systems used in the real world, it added.

Aviation agencies in Europe and the US said actual flight computers are not compromised by his work, but want to find out more.