

FAA Needs a More Comprehensive Approach to Address Cybersecurity - TuxMulder
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-370

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OliverJones
This GAO report is interesting. Some dopes in the popular press picked up on
it saying "passenger wifi is linked to airplane control", because vague
mention of that was made in the abstract. But, of course, the report isn't
about that at all.

But it's more interesting in its recommendation that the FAA develop a
holistic "agency-wide threat model" for its NextGen IP-based air traffic
control system.

Haven't we outgrown the idea that the developers of large-scale systems should
also be responsible for testing it? Haven't we understood, for a long time
now, that developers have blind spots about their own work?

The danger of blind spots is only amplified by large bureaucratic
organizations spending tons of money. If the FAA has "a" threat model, won't
potential threats lying outside that model get ignored?

Public safety might better served be by a bug-bounty system, or by retaining
several teams of outsiders to penetration-test a system like this.

But it will take some serious organization discipline to pull this off. Every
software developer knows there's a twinge of embarrassment when the QA test
finds a defect. Hopefully the NextGen team will be similarly embarrassed by
the most ingenious of their pen-testing teams. And hopefully their
organization will have the good sense not to punish them.

