DEF CON Safe Mode Aerospace Village - Matt Smith - Pilot Reactions to Attacks on Avionic Systems

Researchers have been crafting attacks on aviation systems for almost a decade now, on wireless technologies like ADS-B and ACARS to In Flight Entertainment (IFE) devices. Many attacks seek to affect what the pilots see or how the aircraft is flown. Although we can work out what should happen in theory, does this translate to practice? In this talk, we describe how we investigated this using a flight simulator and 30 type-rated commercial pilots.

In particular, we will discuss:
- What happens when your aircraft thinks you are on collision course - but nothing is there,
- How pilots respond when landing guidance puts you at the wr