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A comment on A plane flying over Germany drawing a Christmas tree. Parent comment

Re:A plane flying over Germany drawing a Christmas tree by Reason077 on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @12:43PM (#15915834)
"the RF message protocol used for most 'live' location stats in FlightRadar24, has no form of authentication."

I wonder if this is a potential security risk, considering ADS-B is not only used for flight tracking but also air traffic control and collision avoidance?

Could a bad actor (using a drone, perhaps) broadcast a false signal and trick aircraft into performing collision avoidance manoeuvres? Or flood the ADS-B bandwidth with false signals to confuse ATC?

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Re:A plane flying over Germany drawing a Christmas tree by bdamm on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @02:11PM (#15916643)
Yes. At which point, the pilots will see what is going on, take manual control, gather data for ATC's inevitable response, and use traditional instruments to navigate the airplane to a safe landing. Passengers would likely be unaware. In the United States, a report would subsequently be filed with the ASRS.
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