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PCIntern

(25,341 posts)
Sun Mar 16, 2014, 09:46 AM Mar 2014

With John Barry's low key music in the background after the opening credits...

the Team of Six stealthily enters the commercial hangar where the Boeing 777 rests before the next-day flight to Beijing. With practiced assurance each of the black-clad technicians installs an aspect of the Commandeering mechanism, developed by the Chinese and brought via freighter to Kuala Lumpur. Forty-five minutes later, the mission completed, they leave for the waiting van disguised as a food-service truck which drives through the exit gate with a wave to the lazy guard in the booth.

Twenty miles away, on the roof of an otherwise indistinguishable office building, the satellite dish is pointed toward the geostationary communications satellite which stands ready to receive the data from the perpetrators. On the fifth floor of the building is a 777 flight simulator, except that in this case, it does not control a trainee, but the actual plane itself.

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So we watch dozens of films, read hundreds of books which utilize this and other "wild" fantasies. Billions of dollars of revenue have come in to film companies and publishers of this genre. Could not happen in real life though? Think about this: in 1971 when I went to college, you picked up a phone receiver, literally dialed a number, and spoke to whomever answered on the other end. You paid a toll amount for that call. But...there were people who possessed what were termed "blue boxes" where there were three keys I was told: the first key would hold open a long distance line, accessed by dialing Information in the state you were interested calling, a second and third key would then somehow be utilized to dial within that toll region, making it a local call for a dime. Impossible! some said at the time. Universities were loaded with phone ripoff artists. But the public assumed that the phone companies were immune to this stuff...because...just because. But they were not.

And so it is with everything else: there is nothing which cannot be hacked or compromised. "Where there is a will,there is a way" is a truism, especially anything involving electronics. Many who denigrate "Conspiracy Theories" should understand that it only takes two individuals to have a conspiracy. It does not have to involve dozens or hundreds of people. "Something" happened here, it may be the vanguard of the next wave, it ma not be. We shall see, shall we not?

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With John Barry's low key music in the background after the opening credits... (Original Post) PCIntern Mar 2014 OP
A guy demonstrated a Smartphone app a while back that did this IDemo Mar 2014 #1
No NV Whino Mar 2014 #2
He might have been referring to John Barry's 007 music. Loudly Mar 2014 #3
Ah, in that case, okay. NV Whino Mar 2014 #4
interestingly there are a great number of people PCIntern Mar 2014 #5
I didn't want Monty to sue my ass. n/t Loudly Mar 2014 #6
Unfortunately we may never know! Auntie Bush Mar 2014 #7

IDemo

(16,926 posts)
1. A guy demonstrated a Smartphone app a while back that did this
Sun Mar 16, 2014, 09:54 AM
Mar 2014

The important distinction being that the system he took control over was a simulator, not an actual aircraft. That, plus it was just the communications, not the flight control section.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/hackers-arent-going-to-hijack-your-plane-with-a-smartphone

PCIntern

(25,341 posts)
5. interestingly there are a great number of people
Sun Mar 16, 2014, 11:57 AM
Mar 2014

associated with the Bond films in the early days who stated unequivocally that The James Bond theme, while credited to Monty Norman was in fact written by Barry and it was a complicated legal settlement.

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