If confirmed, this would be a major case of design failure : according to a FAA report leaked through many websites, including Wired Magazine, the flight control network of Boeing's next Dreamliner is not isolated from the in-flight Internet access to be offered to passengers.

The report states that the FAA did not anticipate potential malicious or unpredicted access to such a critical network in an aircraft. Hacking, but also perturbation by passenger's networked equipments, could lead to "intentional or unintentional corruption of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane".

This is, of course, far from enough to draw any conclusion. There is no hard fact about an exploitable vulnerability that would allow a passenger to hack into the on-board flight control system. Besides, the aerospace industry has a positive track record when it comes to security, and is used to deal with such situations. Especially when the Federal Authority pointed it out.

Nevertheless, this industry also has never had to deal with hackers activity against on-board systems and networks. Those systems are designed to operate in a trusted environment where their failure is the only threat to guard against, and not data manipulation. A system take over would take place within the normal operating boundaries and thus would not trigger any alert or corrective measure.

The impact of such a takeover is also difficult to assess without knowing the systems involved. But we can safely bet on at least the loss of critical flight data presented on the "glass cockpit", the all-electronic displays any modern aircraft has equipped. Worse yet, the stealthy manipulation of such data could lead to the manipulation of the aircraft itself, either by inducing pilots in error or by manipulating the flight director (auto-pilot).

But let's not get ahead of the problem. We were unable to get a hint of that report on an official FAA website. The official link given by most websites carrying this story will not allow to download the report, and the only copies available are on third-party websites not affiliated with FAA. Caution needs to be exerted until this report can be confirmed.