Flights In Poland Grounded After Alleged Hacking Scare

Can planes be hacked? Well if the movies are any indication, it seems that way, although it was only recently that thanks to onboard WiFi and technological advances that it seems that hackers can actually commandeer a plane right from their seat. That being said if you needed one more reason to fear flying, this could be added to the list.

According to a report from Reuters, it seems that over in Warsaw, Poland, several flights were forced to remain on the ground and not allowed to take off after there were reports that hackers had apparently attacked LOT’s computer system which is used to issue flight plans to the airplanes.

When we said apparently, this is because the company has yet to confirm if their systems had truly been hacked or if it was some kind of software glitch, but the airline company states that investigators are currently looking into the issue to better determine what went wrong. For those unfamiliar, LOT is a state-owned Polish airline, and the hack grounded flights and left as many as 1,400 passengers stuck in the airport.

The source of the attack is currently unknown and it seems that it was only about 5 hours later that the problem was fixed but since then, 10 LOT flights had been cancelled and about a dozen more were delayed. LOT spokesman Adrian Kubicki was quoted as saying, “We’re using state-of-the-art computer systems, so this could potentially be a threat to others in the industry.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers, Transportation
Tags: Hacking, Security