FAA worries on-board Net opens jets to cyberattack

0 Comments | USA TODAY, January, 2008 | by Alan Levin

WASHINGTON -- The government is enacting rules to stop a new kind of cyberthreat: a computer attack that could compromise the safety of the much-anticipated Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The Dreamliner, scheduled to go into service by the end of the year, is built with unprecedented on-board networks and Internet access that could tempt a hacker to tamper with the jet, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency wrote little-noticed rules last week that require a design preventing hacker access.

Dreamliner will be pre-wired for passenger Internet connections. Computers will also control the jet's flight controls and monitor the aircraft's health, sending streams of data back to airline ground stations.

Such computerization "may result in...