One of the most popular U.S. Airlines is going to upgrade its passenger entertainment units. Virgin America will upgrade the Red entertainment system using the more flexible Android operating system.

Virgin America has been in service since 2007, and the company states that its aim is to provides low-fare high quality services.

Virgin has announced that it will launch a new Red entertainment service call Red Beta.

The service will be build around a Android operating system in order to allow for faster improvements in the short-term, said Virgin officials.

The System will also add games like Pac Man and Asteroids, Wi-Fi connection and Netflix content.

Eighteen airplanes are expected to receive the new upgrade by the end of this year. and fleet wide upgrades will probably be completed next year.

Analyzing the current reviews on any specialty site on the web, the most well liked feature of Virgin America airlines is , the Red entertainment system. Even in its current condition it is considered a much need feature that all airlines should have.

When you add the fact that the system is available for anyone flying with Virgin Airlines, even for the low cost passengers, then you can understand why people love it.

The Red system offered by Virgin currently allows you to order food, watch movies ,play games and more.

The Red also has a built in map that shows you where your flight is currently positioned. The entertainment system allows you to watch several videos for free, and adds pay-per-view movie selections as well.

Music is off course also included in the system, a thing you could expect from a company that started as a record shop.

There are some games as well, like doom and some open source games that you can play for free.

The Virgin Group was build from the ground by entrepreneur Richard Branson and Nik Powel.

Virgin America had trouble starting as a company since at the time, it was not in conformity with the U.S. regulations on airlines, which demands that at least 75% of the company, should be in the control of American citizens.

After overcoming these initial problems, through the creation of a U.S. controlled trust to handle the majority of the stock the company, the airline has become one of the most well known in America.
Image Source: telegraph.co.uk

United Airlines has just launched a Bug Bounty program, inviting skilled hackers and security experts to point out any bugs and flaws that the company might have in their sites, apps, or online portals. It’s the first ever Bug Bounty to be launched by an airline.

The reward is an atypical one that will either prove to be very appealing to the target, or very unappealing. Instead of offering fame or fortune like Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, the company will be rewarding programmers with a million united air miles.

What this means is that winners will be awarded up to one million miles worth of flying, but they will only be able to use them within the United Airlines chain. The worse the bug is, the more miles you win.

The company’s statement read: “At United, we take your safety, security and privacy seriously. We utilize best practices and are confident that our systems are secure”.

United Airlines wants to pay you to hack them, but the context of the contest is an interesting one.

On one hand, it is being strategically launched mere weeks after the company kicked a security researcher (Chris Roberts) off of one of its flights for using Tweeter to divulge vulnerabilities in the Wi-Fi and entertainment systems in some of United’s planes made by Boeing and Airbus.

On the other hand, the announcement comes just weeks after the FBI and the TSA asked airlines to look for theoretical hacks in their in-flight WiFi due to said tweet by mister Roberts, who used social media to tell the world that he can access the airplane’s oxygen mask controls. As expected, he was met by FBI agents as soon as the plane landed and banned from flying with the airline.

As far the contest goes, United’s rules clearly specify not to look for bugs in its onboard WiFi, entertainment systems or avionics systems. They do not want experts testing their planes while moving from point A to point B.

Though some believe this is a poor choice that undermines the point of any bug finding effort and misses the point of the FBI, the brand may have actually spent some time thinking the event through.

Finding bugs, flaws and weakness in a system typically involves attacking it until it inevitably breaks. If this were to happen on a live flight it could lead to an unpleasant, unwanted and tragic crash. Even in the happy scenario where the plane wouldn’t crash, the event would act as a very serious scare for most passengers sharing the flight, lead to bad word of mouth and loss of customers.

United Airlines stresses the seriousness of the issue by informing that if you are caught ignoring their wishes, you will be tossed off the flight, and more than likely find yourself under criminal investigation.

Participants are also not allowed to use brute-force attacks, code injection attacks, denial of service attacks, or compromise customer loyalty accounts.

United seems to be focusing the competition on testing customer-facing websites and finding bugs that could allow authentication bypass, cross-site scripting, data leakage and remote code execution.

Jason Steer, chief security strategist from FireEye, thinks that the company’s Bug Bounty program is a smart move. He gave a statement saying that crowdsource testing for security weaknesses can be hugely valuable to an organization.

Anyone willing to participate must be a member of the airlines’ MileagePlus program first. More details can be found on United Airlines’ website.

Image Source: flyflytravel.com