Hacking the FAA and GPS

It's been recently revealed the the FAA systems have been hacked. That their webservers and the loads of personal information has been compromised repeatedly in the past is no surprise; however, they're saying that "mission support function" servers have been compromised.

The problem with reading this report is that functionality isn't well defined, and frankly I'm not an ATC insider to know exactly how all the pieces go together. Is "mission support" tracking certificates and registration? No big deal for safely, just lots of papers moving around. Does it cover ATC hand off between stations? Hassle, but still not a huge deal, just a lot more radio chatter. Does every approach center in a Class C or better airport use the same system which connects to the FAA and requires that connection to function? That's a problem!

I expect the media to hop on this and assume that hackers can crash airliners willy-nilly if they have access to the FAA computers. They've seen it happen in movies as far back as the 90's. It was a nifty plot device, but absurd then too: VOR's need to be taken down for a day or more to realign it to match the drifting magnetic isogonic lines, not to mention that VOR navigation just isn't tight enough to fly a single engine into a tower. Fiddling with ILS to crash a plane is also pretty absurd -- not only are they legally required to have a visual on the runway, but the radar altimeter would be screaming so early that the pilots would know something was up.

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Today is even safer with GPS. We'll assume IFR, since VFR conditions will allow the pilot(s) to see and avoid ground obstacles. With GPS, you would have to change to clocks on multiple satellites -- four is the minimum for getting posistion with altitude and five for IFR, but I usally get 9 in my car -- which are all in motion and do so in such a way that they all report time ticks for a certain position as if it were somewhere else. This isn't impossible, but to do so on the fly on seven to nine moving satellites for the time it takes to crash an aircraft is bordering on impossible. Not to mention WAAS ground based facilities which would be pointing out any errors on the order of nanoseconds. And then, since we're in IFR, your GPS will have RAIM and FDE. RAIM basically lets it looks at the satellite data and detect bad data. FDE lets it go the step further and isolated and ignore the erroneous satellite's data.

If you're an AOPA member, I strongly reccomend their asf classes for GPS in VFR and IFR. Lots of info, and some great flash animation to help you visualize how this distributed system all works together.

I've found a lot of discussion about RAIM needed for GPS under IFR, and that RAIM doesn't exist in handheld units. Why this should be in unclear. We're essentially dealing with mathematical calculations which, given the increased speed and decreased size and power requirements of processors, should be a pretty low hurdle for today's devices.

The AIM documents regarding GPS for IFR starts at 1-1-19 subsection e. There's a lot, and it goes on without being narrowed down to a simple table that I could find. I know it includes things like being a TSO unit and having TSO wiring and antenna(s).

As the final piece of my logic puzzle, we have the Garmin 696 -- expensive and big, but pretty awesome and clearly designed to be a helpmeet for IFR pilots. They even have a very professional panel dock availiable for it so there are no wires hanging loose in the cockpit.

Here's my delima, assuming you have an IA level the dock and run TSO wires and antennas, where exactly is the 696 deficient as an IFR navigation device?

Portables and handhelds are showing up with synthetic vision now. How long is it going to be before pilots start using this to negoitate IFR conditions at uncontrolled airports? What do you want to bet if the FAA gets their user fees, there will be a whopping charge for IFR? More temptation to skirt the rules and fly cheap.