Air Force One...continued

Gary Compton

Gary Compton

I miss you, wor kid.
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So as per my last post re Air Force One, my bad guys have taken control on the plane by hacking into the onboard control systems via it's Wifi, a laser and wearable technology hidden in one of the security staff's suits.

I now want the Pentagon to take control back by firing an electro magnetic pulse which will knock out all the systems and the pilots will manually take control. Problem is AF1 has its electronics hardened to EMP's so what can I do?

Also, is there a dedicated Pentagon or Norad control room that monitors AF1? I have searched the net but can't find anything.
 
Rather than use an EMP, why not have a security fail safe to shut down the electronics? Activating it may not be so easy to carry out, though...

PS - NSA, this is for a fiction writing piece. :)
 
Could one of the MC's with technical knowledge engineer 'A-team style' something (widget?? long piece of wire???) that would be susceptible to an EMP, introduce it or graft it into a part of the plane - past or through the EMP shielding - that if it were to fail would 'reset the system to zero' and cause the plane to reset to manual?

(Of course then he'd have to get a message to the Pentagon to actually fire an EMP warhead at the plane to trigger it as well.)

I probably haven't thought this through well enough though....
 
Need something more dramatic to go with my superior engineered German takeover of the plane. :)

I like the idea of the EMP. But wondered if electronics hardened to a EMP attack could be overpowered if the Pentagon turned up the voltage.
 
According to this website then http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2004-02/1076681126.Ph.r.html

It says that if the plane has an antennae (which one assumes AF1 must have) then it cannot be EMP-proofed. Thus EMP'ing could destroy the link that the baddies are using (assuming they are radioing in the instructions.)

How then the good guys regain control of the plane...is still left in the up the air, so to speak though.
 
Maybe they already have a manual system for the pilots to use? It's AF1 after all.
 
....However if I were an evil Teutonic bad-ass, then I would know that they might EMP the link - so I would program as part of the hack a pre-determined course that the computer would take if it wasn't receiving any signals (I don't know what you want to do with the plane - land it or threaten to crash it?)
 
If you use an EMP the electronics don't get turned off, they get completely fried. As in you have to get new components that were nowhere near the EMP and then install all of those. You can't "reboot" after an EMP. If you EMP a plane you will probably end up with a crash as most of the controls are electronic now :(

Also laser won't help you to hack anything, especially not WiFi. The only thing it would do would be to annoy or blind the pilots if it was aimed at them and was strong enough. It won't help you hack the WiFi... :(

I still think that calling/contacting as ATC and hacking through the contact given by phone/headset to control the plane is best bet as the only way to get around it would be to kill the connection, which is really hard to do once made as it can protect itself and won't turn off. So you would need to disable the connection in some fancy way (hack masts/satellites/ATC to kill the call etc). It is pretty impressive how that can work (and is do-able if you are clever enough/have enough resources/skills etc) with current tech (obviously you need to be amazing at all the required bits) and you can then remote fly the plane as you have complete control of the electronics :)

But you lost me as soon as you said hack it with lasers :( sorry :( the problems of being surrounded by a bunch of electronics engineers who PFFT at everything seems to have rubbed off (I now understand a lot more than I would ever want to about bluetooth (OH's new job) o_O )
 
The original laser which transferred the malware to the wearable technology was fired from a bad guy satellite so the Pentagon could simultaneously take out the satellite and the plane with EMP's
 
The problem with laser stuff is it only works through fibre cable, and you need to have the matching tech at the end of the cable to rejig the laser spectrum into actual data. It won't work without fibre optic cable.
You can do laser internet (sort of) but it only covers a couple of Km at full max and isn't a visible laser and is generally more than a bit rubbish. Reading Uni uses that somewhere on campus I think (?)
 
Yes I here what you are saying but this is US military (and my antagonists are more advanced) - who knows what they have developed. :)
 
Hi,

You can use lasers for information transfer, but on a moving target? I doubt it.

And an EMP if it works is going to fry eveything. That means the plane has no working systems at all. What are they going to do? Walk out on the wings and start raising and lowering the flaps by hand? (Though that would actually be a cool story.)

Cheers, Greg.
 
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