Potential hackers announce threats to airline flights

[inanna]

Source: USA Today

6:37 a.m. EST January 27, 2015

Several hacker-type accounts on Twitter announced threats to several flights on Monday, leading JetBlue to pull one flight back to the gate due to the safety of passengers, the airline said in a statement.

A Twitter account that includes an expletive issued a handful of tweets threatening five flights, including flight 321 that was due to take off from Boston for West Palm Beach, Fla., at 7:35 p.m.

The account tweeted to JetBlue at about 7 p.m. ET, "Guys, flight 321 and 334 have explosives on board, and you don't care? It's going to be funny watching them fall out of the sky."

<snip>

In all, the Twitter account threatened five flights on Monday evening.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/27/hacker-explosives-flights-airlines/22387693/

[mnhtnbb]

1. Oh, wonderful. The latest reason to avoid flying.

[inanna]

2. They need to find these psychos ASAP.

[mnhtnbb]

3. I agree. Probably nothing more than some basement types amusing themselves...but how do you know?

The airlines can't ignore it. So everybody gets delayed.

[mnhtnbb]

4. Looked up the West Palm flight--ended up cancelled. Given conditions in Boston, I'll bet

anyone on that plane was REALLY pissed not to get out of Boston last night. That makes it feel
more like somebody's idea of a practical joke.

[jberryhill]

5. "leading JetBlue to pull one flight back to the gate due to the safety of passengers"

I know good writers who can't find work.

What, exactly, are the qualifications to write news these days?

"The safety of passengers" was not the cause of pulling the flight back. It could be "due to the threat" or "due to concerns about the safety of passengers", but it was not pulled back "due to the safety of passengers".

This crap is making me re-think my concerns about "English only" legislation. It might be a good idea for supposed "English" publications to use it.

[kentauros]

6. The hackers that make it to the news

seem to have no fucking imagination!

Come on! If y'all are good enough to hack into flight info and aircraft, then you're good enough to hack into offshore banks and do a little wealth distribution.

Then again, maybe the ones that have done that were caught and then "disappeared"

[KeepItReal]

7. WTF is a "hacker type" Twitter account?

If you create a Twitter account and tweet, you're just a Twitter user.

If you can spoof a Twitter account (i.e. not have one) and tweet or hijack someone else's Twitter account and tweet - that would be a hack.