[Cryptography] Zero Knowledge for Opening the Cockpit of an Airbus

Peter Todd pete at petertodd.org
Thu Mar 26 17:40:03 EDT 2015


On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 12:39:38PM +0100, Thomas Asta wrote:
> http://m.bild.de/news/ausland/flug-4u9525/germanwings-flug-4u9524-warum-war-die-crew-so-machtlos-40308982,variante=S,wantedContextId=17410084.bildMobile.html
> 
> Hello
> I think this is the appropriate list to solve this problem.
> Maybe you have heard of the airbus crash in Germany. The door to the
> cockpit was locked and one pilot was inside and one outside. Even for the
> toilet pilots have to leave the locked space. And the crew knows the pin to
> open the door and there exists even a crew wide known and for the plane or
> company never changed  security code, which opens the door for 30 secs.
> In case a person wants to attack one person outside the cockpit this in
> many cases possible.
> At the turkish or cyprus airport even glas bottles, Coke oneway metal
> bottles or forks from the restaurant are available at the gates.
> If we suggest a setting that no one outside knows the code, Does a zero
> knowledge approach (see wikipedia) work or is a third party authentication
> from tower needed to unlock the doors? Any suggstions?

Dunno about you, but I'd trust two pilots, 150 passengers, and six
terrorists over one maybe suicidal pilot and some complex crypto B.S.
any day.

It'd make way more sense to just have a button on the outside that WILL
open the cockpit door in 60 seconds that also sets off a very loud alarm
that clearly states someone is trying to get into the cockpit - the
chance of the passengers not being able to overpower any hijackers in
the event such an alarm is triggered is way smaller than the chance of
another Germinwing happening.

-- 
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
0000000000000000077b34d7356678c93395cdc8be50db6615ac0f499e3c6b0d
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