SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A cybersecurity expert who was pulled off a plane in Syracuse in April after sending a tweet previously hacked an airplane’s flight controls, causing it to go sideways, an FBI agent wrote in court papers.
Chris Roberts, a researcher based in Colorado, was pulled off a United Airlines flight when it landed in Syracuse April 15. His electronics — including an iPad, MacBook Pro, three hard drives and seven thumb drives — were seized and he was questioned for hours. In an affidavit filed by FBI agents seeking a warrant to search the devices seized in Syracuse, FBI agents said that he previously hacked into in-flight controls.
In April, Roberts had flown from Denver to Chicago, then boarded a new plane to Syracuse to speak at a conference, according to news reports. During the first flight, Roberts sent out a tweet that drew the FBI’s attention:
According to the FBI, the EICAS messages refer to an alerting system that provides the pilot with information about the airplane’s engines and mention of “pass oxygen on” could refer to passenger oxygen masks.
In a following Twitter conversation, Roberts acknowledged the “course of action laid out above” could land him in jail. According to the FBI, Roberts had received two warnings from the federal government not to access airplane networks.
Those warnings came in February, around the time the FBI sat down with Roberts to discuss “vulnerabilities” with certain plane’s networks. Those vulnerabilities were specific to planes with video monitors installed on the seatbacks, the FBI said.
In two meetings, Roberts told FBI agents he was able to hack into flight controls on those planes by hooking his computer up to the electronic boxes on the bottom of passengers’ seats, according to the FBI’s affidavit.
According to the FBI, Roberts told agents that he had exploited network vulnerabilities using this method of hacking between 15 and 20 times in the last five years. He said that on one flight, he was able to command the plane to climb, which resulted in the plane moving sideways, the affidavit said. Roberts also said he monitored traffic from the cockpit system during this time, according to the affidavit.
In an interview with WIRED, Roberts said the FBI’s assertions about these previous incidents were taken out of context.
“It would appear from what I’ve seen that the federal guys took one paragraph out of a lot of discussions and a lot of meetings and notes and just chose that one as opposed to plenty of others,” Roberts told WIRED.
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