In part 3 of my 12th anniversary series "Imagining the Impossible," I describe in detail how to take over the 777 flight control system from the passenger cabin
Watching the video brings to mind the possibility of a stowaway hijacker already set up inside the electronics bay. I haven’t seen anyone mention this possibility. I also lived in Shanghai and traveled into KL on red eyes before and after the hijacking on Malaysia Air and I wouldn’t say their security was tight. As I mentioned the lights were on and the stewardesses were hawking duty free items for the first hour. Were any air Marshall’s identified on the flight?
Hey Trip! I think a stowaway hijacker is a distinct possibility. In pointing out that the 777 electronics bay is vulnerable to entry from the passenger cabin, I'm not trying to say that's the only way it's vulnerable. As to the air marshall question, I've never heard of one being mentioned, and I imagine it would have been had one been aboard.
Hey Trip, sorry for the slow response, I was traveling. I would say that taking over the flight controls would have to come after communications were cut, and before the SDU was hacked. My guess is that the plane was diverted and the plane was depressurized, then the hijackers took control of the cockpit, repressurized the plane, and started feeding spoofed location velocity data into the SDU via the ARINC 629 bus.
There was no hijack, here is SDMR that shows internal BTO / BFO constraints
https://youtu.be/Sjib0ToWDxQ?si=uxvltVSumf48xR9o
Watching the video brings to mind the possibility of a stowaway hijacker already set up inside the electronics bay. I haven’t seen anyone mention this possibility. I also lived in Shanghai and traveled into KL on red eyes before and after the hijacking on Malaysia Air and I wouldn’t say their security was tight. As I mentioned the lights were on and the stewardesses were hawking duty free items for the first hour. Were any air Marshall’s identified on the flight?
Hey Trip! I think a stowaway hijacker is a distinct possibility. In pointing out that the 777 electronics bay is vulnerable to entry from the passenger cabin, I'm not trying to say that's the only way it's vulnerable. As to the air marshall question, I've never heard of one being mentioned, and I imagine it would have been had one been aboard.
Thank you for finally putting this piece together. So how would this fit into the data bus timeline? How does the restart of the SDU figure into this?
Hey Trip, sorry for the slow response, I was traveling. I would say that taking over the flight controls would have to come after communications were cut, and before the SDU was hacked. My guess is that the plane was diverted and the plane was depressurized, then the hijackers took control of the cockpit, repressurized the plane, and started feeding spoofed location velocity data into the SDU via the ARINC 629 bus.