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Re:Hackers can fake radio signals to 'hijack' aircraft landi... by Stevvo on Thursday May 16, 2019 @03:41PM (#19932315)
I don't think the attack would work in the wild; even on a Cat III autoland approach, there is still a decision altitude and runway visual range requirements. When the runway never appears it's a go around.
Re:Hackers can fake radio signals to 'hijack' aircraft landi... by stouset on Thursday May 16, 2019 @04:11PM (#19932642)
Cat IIIc has no decision height, but there aren’t any airports that are even planning to install this type of system that I’m aware of. Cat IIIa and IIIb have decision heights of 100ft and 50ft, respectively. Those don’t leave much time for a pilot to execute a go-around.

You’d probably have to engineer the flight path to go through a building, power line, or other obstacle, but that in and of itself seems like a difficult proposition since flight paths leading into an airport with this type of system wouldn’t have 100ft obstacles anywhere near the approach direction. You’d have to spoof the localizer to be offset to the side of the runway to accomplish this, but doing it too far will cause instruments to disagree (GPS, VOR) and ATC to yell at you.

Maybe you could aim it at a nearby taxiway, but to do so (per my understanding of the physics of ILS) you’d have to have your equipment in-line with the taxiway. All of this just seems really hard to pull off in practice.

Re:Hackers can fake radio signals to 'hijack' aircraft landi... by TheOtherHobbes on Friday May 17, 2019 @02:55AM (#19936968)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_c...

One of the many conspiracy theories associated with this incident is that Russia deliberately created the physical and electronic conditions necessary for this crash to take place.

The cockpit records suggest there were more obvious causes in this instance, but it seems very likely a state actor would be able to engineer a successful attack using a variety of means - not just ILS, but other forms of physical and electronic spoofing.

Re:Hackers can fake radio signals to 'hijack' aircraft landi... by sokoloff on Thursday May 16, 2019 @05:30PM (#19933503)
If you can get the airplane to descend early to a decision height 200 feet above touchdown zone elevation in an area where local terrain is 150’ above TDZE, you might be able to crash one who initiates the missed approach at the DH.

I agree it’s not a practical attack.

Re:Hackers can fake radio signals to 'hijack' aircraft landi... by inferiorhuman on Thursday May 16, 2019 @07:53PM (#19934685)
You'd also probably get a (E)GPWS warning well before crashing.