X-Ray Devices on Airport PCs Can be Hacked

According to a warning released by security specialists, it wouldn't be long when hackers seize the technically sophisticated X-Ray scans capturing individuals' naked body from security checks at airports and post their images on websites.

Ty Miller, Chief Technology Officer of Pure Hacking, said that tests of online systems' and websites' securities revealed that the PCs, which ran X-Ray devices, were hackers' easy target, as reported by Fudzilla on January 7, 2010.

Miller said that the only method to get to the naked images was to hack into the computers that regulated those X-Ray instruments. He explained that someone could be operating a PC and pressing the OK button as people passed through the scan. It was also possible that PC might contain vulnerability in the same way as an ordinary desktop could.

If the hacker compromised the PC, he could load it with a Trojan that could seize a video, which recorded everything the computer operator viewed, Miller said. Such hacking assaults could take place provided the X-Ray instrument was attached to the airport's network of computers, and thus publicly exposed.

Alan Watt, Head of Forensics at e.law (a company for computer forensics) and who is a researcher on Internet-based terrorism, states that majority of computer programs used for airport scanning operations contained backdoor Trojans. He explained that suppose some Seattle-based (Washington, USA) company owned and used the X-Ray program, they would normally be using a backdoor to let them conduct remote maintenance, as reported by Smh on January 7, 2010.

Watt further explained that if any attacker hacked in through the backdoor, he could control the airport's computer from even a far-off distance as if he was operating it sitting near it.

In this way, the hackers would be able to access everything saved on that PC.

According to Watt, it is often a disgruntled ex-employee or someone simply careless with a password, which results in such a hack, in fact any hack.

Finally, security specialists suggest that airport staff needs to impart quality performance and be very honest so that they can optimally safeguard the people's scanned images.

Related article: X-Mass Greetings Could Bring Viruses

» SPAMfighter News - 1/19/2010