The discovery comes courtesy of cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners and was initially spotted by The Register. As part of this year’s virtual DEF CON hacker conference, Pen Test Partners showed off a video walkthrough of a British Airways 747 after the airline decided to retire its entire fleet last month due to the global pandemic. The roughly 10-minute tour is a neat glimpse into the plane’s rarely seen avionics bay and cockpit—where Pen Test Partners discovered a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive.
Just wow! I feel safer.
You’d think that in the six years since 2014, someone would have figured out a way to bring the aviation industry into the 21st century. Surprisingly, an Aviation Today report notes that even in 2020, a “significant number of airlines are still using floppy disks for software parts loading.”
