[Peetwo]

MH370 - The trouble with clickbait in information vacuum??

In amongst the hilarity of Commodore Barnacle Joyce's "Canine Calamity" capers & discussing our resident aviation safety doyens next  SMH luncheon...


 

{Footnote 1 for kharon... }

...I totally forgot to sort the wheat from the chaff of the Wired article which the SMH used to generate the bollocks story above. Fortunately Ben Sandilands - the best aviation tendentious blogger of them all - has brought me back to TAWS... :

More evidence of MH370 causing mass inattention, gullibility in society

Ben Sandilands | May 18, 2015 2:46PM |


A hacking symposium. Could such fun make MH370 disappear?

OK. I’ll crack. After more than a day of pestering by nut jobs, conspiracy theorists and even that rarest of species, other reporters in paid employment, about the guy who hacked the movies menu in a jet to make it fly sideways, I’ll offer a considered review of the claims.

They are rubbish.

The headline on the Wired story that is causing allusions to computer hacking being to blame for the loss of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 says:Feds Say That Banned Researcher Commandeered a plane

The headline isn’t supported by anything in the story, and even its star of the moment , computer hacker security researcher Chris Roberts of Denver, doesn’t claimed to have ‘commandeered’ an airliner.

Indeed none of the things Mr Roberts claims to have done are nailed down to a specific flight, and his narrative is allowed by Wired to wander in an undetermined manner between what might have been simulations, what might have been real events, and what might have been a discernible external input affected the thrust setting of an engine in an unnamed type of jet for an unnamed airline.

A charitable view of Mr Roberts’ amazing history of illegally tampering with airliner systems while in flight (using screwdrivers and clamps on the underseat IFE boxes) is that he has spent six years failing to prove that a computer hacker can ‘commandeer’ an airliner.

Sure, anyone who has been the victim of underseat entertainment system boxes, placed perfectly to punish passengers for not paying for business or first class seats, might feel that attacking them with sharp implements was entirely reasonable behavior.

But there is no proof, despite the misleading headline, that Mr Roberts has demonstrated a transfer of control from the cockpit to a passenger armed with screwdrivers, alligator clips and a connection to a laptop. Mr Roberts seems to be saying he maybe guilty of shooting his mouth off to an FBI agent, including special agent Mark Hurley, as recounted in the story that started the current excitement.

Or Mr Roberts just wants notoriety. The actual quotations in the Wired story are confusing. Mr Roberts is quoted as saying rather strong things, but then backing down when pressed.

The alarming thing about the requests for a view about Mr Roberts claims is that none of those who called Plane Talking had actually read it in full. It’s not the best story Wired has ever published. It’s downright mediocre.

It’s bad enough when our phones and computers try to guess what we would have said before we complete a word,  but now we live in a time when people don’t even read a story before knowing what it says, except that they don’t.

However, there is a fairly wide body of suspicion that MH370′s systems were ‘hacked’, not by someone in a seat, but standing up in the insecure electronics and electric bay that is accessed through a floor hatch immediately behind the cockpit on 777s.

The actual YouTubes of how to do this seem to get pulled down as fast as they pop up somewhere else, but if you are determined, you will find them.  The purpose of that physical intervention has been surmised, widely, to have been done by someone intimately familiar with 777 systems, allowing the blacking out of seat back entertainment systems so that any passengers who were awake on the red-eye from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014 could no longer see the map showing the flight’s progress along its intended path across the Gulf of Thailand, Vietnam and then up the east coast of China toward its destination.

That intervention was, it is suggested, also intended to fully disable the ACARS or automated status reporting system on board the Boeing 777-200ER, but failed to prevent its basic standby pinging of a communication satellite  at various intervals.

The last such sets of pings initiated by MH370 came seven hours 39 minute after lift off, from a place where the geosynchronous Inmarsat satellite parked over the west Indian Ocean above the equator, had to be about 40 degrees above the horizon.

Those signals came just when the claimed fuel load of the flight would have been exhausted, causing the jet to spiral down to impact, it is further claimed, with the surface of the south Indian Ocean some 1600-1800 kms SW of Perth.

Yet with so many variables, and so many issues as to the reliability of this bit of data or that, the final sea bed location of MH370 is elusive.

Into this dark and imprecise riddle fly the conspiracy theories, and numerous stories that could be termed click bait.

Just like this story, which to use a marine food chain analogy, is click bait that feeds on click bait.

 Excellent stuff Ben..    All back on track now - although you would have to admit the other Aunty's 'Canine Calamity' was absolutely hilarious..

MTF hopefully with an update to the Pinocchio & Beaker (SMH) Press club luncheon - topic of discussion Cyber Security in Aviation...P2    

Footnote 1: "K" you might be interested to know the mugshot for Pinocchio (PG) was extracted from this brief presser... :