Pakistani hackers have allegedly gained access to planes landing in India by taking over their communication channels. When landing, the pilots are forced to hear patriotic Pakistani songs. As the tension between Pakistan and India has increased, cyber hackers are coming ahead with different tactics to gain attention and bring the hackers of opposition down.
According to Tines of India, when aircrafts try to communicate with Jammu Air Traffic control for landing, hackers tap into their frequency, block their communication channel and start transmitting Pakistani patriotic songs.
A senior Indian pilot, while speaking to the Times of India, admitted that this was not something new. It has been happening for a while now and they haven’t been able to do anything about it. Their only recourse is to contact Air Traffic control in Udhampur, which then contacts Jammu ATC on landline and asks them to switch to an alternate frequency. This gives pilots enough time to coordinate with ground staff and land their planes.
“We use VHF, which is line of sight communication and is known as ‘if you can see us, you can talk to us.’ Due to this, hackers frequently jam our frequency with ATC and start playing their music. This is a big irritant as we are in final stage of landing,” said a pilot while talking on this issue with the Indian newspaper.
Due to such attacks on communication channels by Pakistani hackers, Jammu ATC frequently switches their frequency to minimize this cross-border hacking.
With the ongoing tension between Pakistan and India, it is expected that hackers of both of the countries will be actively looking for vulnerabilities in different online projects.
