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THE PRIMARY LARVA OF THE OIL-BEETLES

Airplanes are a luxury for most people to own, let alone toy with — given all the national security regulations. This year's DEF CON, however, revealed a fascinating finding leaving many, including myself, surprised. July this year, British Airways announced it would retire its BOEING-747 fleet "due to the downturn in travel caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic," as by their spokesperson. stated This enabled security researchers, and of to get their hands on a BOEING-747, and show us what goes on behind the scenes in the aircraft. Ken Munro Alex Lomas Pen Test Partners Floppy disks 💾, flight updates ✈️, security 🛂 and legacy systems 🤖 In their DEF CON presentation, the researchers gave a thorough walkthrough of the aircraft and pointed out something that Gareth Corfield of wasted no time in reporting on. The Register They revealed a critical component of the BOEING-747 jet, the "navigation database loader" which uses , even in 2020! 3.5" floppy disks for updates The "diskette stowage" compartment next to the component has a number of floppies, as the video (provided at the bottom of this article) gives a quick glimpse of. To update the navigation database, Lomas explained, an engineer would have to visit the aircraft , with a set of floppy disks. every 28 days But why floppy disks? In times where smartphones and IoTs are abundantly ubiquitous, and airlines brag about their in-flight entertainment systems equipped with USB ports and Wi-Fi, why would such a critical nav system still rely on these legacy diskettes? To be clear, not all airplanes do. Jeff Carrithers, President of GlobalAir.com and a former aircraft researcher, has shed light on the matter: "The aircraft you are referring must be a vintage aircraft. Floppy disk are no longer used in any modern era aircraft. The vintage aircraft may only have the legacy system still in place because the cost of updating the navigation system would be too cost prohibitive." Carrithers further stated this is a remnant of legacy aviation hardware from the seventies. "At a guess, this aircraft would be a commercial or military aircraft made in the early '70s. Some private aircraft still use CDs to update their navigation systems," he continued. These points were further confirmed by a Flight Operations Expert from , José Godoy who said, "Most aircraft flying out there have been designed in the 1980s or early 1990s when floppy disks were the 'state of the art' technology." Simpfly Godoy said one can find these legacy technologies replaced from time to time whenever a newer fleet is launched: "A good example is the A320, with the original project from the 1980s which uses floppy disks, while his new version, the A320neo, from 2010s, has retired the floppy disks." What are "navigation databases" in an aviation context? Jeff Hall, a senior consultant with Wesbey Associates and a former private pilot explained that the navigation databases are not maps in the context of Google Earth of MapQuest. "It is location and frequency information about flight navigation aids and airports in particular countries or regions. This is used in conjunction with programming a flight path when the pilots get on board for the flight." "The flight cases that pilots used to carry had the physical navigation charts from Jeppesen. ," said Hall. Now those charts are stored on iPads or tablets that the pilots carry Godoy also weighed in on the subject, "navigation database comprises routes (composed by airways, waypoints and navigation aids) and airport information (runways, approach and departure instrument procedures)." What's with the 28-day mark? It's to do with how the U.S. government regulatory body, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would update the U.S. airport databases every four weeks, explained Carrithers. The FAA would then mail these floppy disks to flight departments, aircraft control towers, airlines, and weather services around the country. "This was all pre-internet and WAN networks were limited to single buildings, [unless] you were with the CIA or other secret organizations. But all large commercial or military aircraft were just starting electronic navigation systems in the cockpits," Carrithers continued. What about the security implications? This is what's debatable and I can understand both sides of the argument. Arguably, leaving physical access the of accessing a critical system, such as via floppy disks, makes it much more secure than expanding the attack surface by opening up remote network access. only possible way If the ground staff tasked with pushing the updates need physically go into the plane to update its navigation loader, the approach is far safer than Wi-Fi-powered "smart updates." ... But that makes ground staff the weakest link in the security chain. "In theory, it would be more secure from a hack outside the aircraft.  But it would probably not have any security protocols to login. Just put the floppy in the drive and it is on and then download it to a hard drive and overwrite the base code. Basic DOS prompts," explained Carrithers. What about malware and viruses? Hall acknowledged, using floppies to provide updates is more secure than doing so over-the-air. But, floppies aren't exempt from the risks of viruses and malware as expected from any external media device. Although this hasn't caused any notable problems on airplanes thus far, as Hall states: "I don’t recall an airplane ever becoming infected using floppy disks as the FAA and airlines had strict procedures for scanning disks for viruses and malware before they ever got near an airplane. But there were a number of incidents over the years where ATMs got infected by floppy disks and CDs performing updates on them." Further, these airplanes aren't running widely used commercial operating systems like Windows or Linux which attract malware attacks, "but special non-stop operating systems that are Unix derivatives, so it’s not as easy to infect as one might think," Hall continued. However, the other concern that remains is the use of outdated technologies in aviation. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Aircraft use multiple legacy systems, but the approach works and has worked sufficiently for many years. "So much about aviation is old-school: the hardware, the software, the infrastructure. And ESPECIALLY the way people in aviation THINK," said Patrick Smith, an airline pilot and the host of . AskThePilot.com Reflecting on Carrithers' previous comment, Smith said, "What is a 'modern era' aircraft? The 787 and A350, maybe? Most other planes are based on platforms developed in the 1980s or even the 1970s." [Full disclosure: Smith had no knowledge of Carrithers' comment. I had posed to him a general question: if modern aircraft still relied on floppies] Inconvenience: too many disks! If it's too expensive to replace floppy disk readers with say, a USB interfaced system, it's understandable. Moreover, USB ports can't always be trusted. A cybersecurity professor had recently crashed an in-flight entertainment system using nothing but a USB mouse ( ). CVE-2019-9019 But using floppies is downright inconvenient. Each diskette can store a mere 1.44 megs. This means a typical update of navigation database may require a series of 8 or so floppies, loaded in a particular order. A higher-capacity CD-ROM would likely be more efficient and eradicate errors—by that I mean, you wouldn't have to worry about messing up the sequence in which the diskettes are to be inserted. ACI Jet, a global aviation services company recently published a blog post titled, which actually discusses this very issue. " Can data loading be fun? " "In any environment other than aviation, database loading would be easy and cheap ( ). Being that the hardware required is on an aircraft, however, means that you’re likely doing this with archaic media such [as] Zip or floppy disks." don’t say it The post describes the process of pushing the updates may sound easy but can take hours on older systems that have "spotty availability" and are unreliable. This nuisance has to be repeated every 2-4 weeks. In the same blog post, the company lists some products which can take the pain out of the update process. These include capabilities like USB interfaces and wireless updates powered by an iPad app. The company's Avionics Manager, Brian Ford stated, "We routinely work on aircraft that use ZIP disks and PCMCIA cards to update databases, along with proprietary software to load said cards." "The concept may be how people rationalize it, but ultimately the development cycles for getting hardware approved for aircraft moves glacially show compared to consumer electronics." 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' "Much of that is due to the reliability, safety, and testing requirements to get the approval of the regulatory agencies involved. That means that once a piece of hardware in approved and installed, that design is unlikely to be improved upon." "If there are features that could be added to justify the cost of a hardware upgrade (perhaps Wi-Fi loading through an iPad vs. proprietary PC software that may require older hardware) then we can start to see components with modern interfaces like USB," Ford concluded. Now, for your viewing pleasure, here's the original DEF CON video stream by Munro and Lomas: (C) 2020. ( ). All Rights Reserved. First published on . Ax Sharma Twitter Security Report Previously published at https://securityreport.com/why-do-airplanes-use-floppy-disks-in-2020-for-critical-updates/

Do Airplanes Use Floppy Disks for Critical Updates Even in 2020?

Source: Shutterstock Over the years, Chennai has grown to become the in India. SaaS hub But every time, when someone asked about the list of SaaS Companies in Chennai, there was no listing available. So here is a list of all the SaaS companies in Chennai in Alphabetical Order. Disclaimer: I work at Freshworks for Freshsales CRM but this list was put together with an intention to help the SaaS Community in Chennai. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer. Animaker Animaker is a cloud-based video making app used by over 1.5 million users from 180+ countries. With Animaker in your arsenal, you can create explainer videos, social media videos, vertical videos & video infographics to meet growing demands of video in marketing, education & content space. , Founders: Srinivasa Raghavan Loganathan Kodiyarasu 2015 Founded in: Bootstrapped Funding raised: Nil Investors: ~60 Team Size: Chargebee Chargebee is a recurring billing platform for subscription based SaaS and E-commerce businesses. It allows you to automate payment collection, invoicing, email notifications and customer management, by integrating with leading payment gateways. , , Thiyagu, Founders: Krish Subramaniam Rajaraman Santhanam Saravanan KP 2011 Founded in: 24.2 Million USD Funding Raised: Accel Partners, Tiger Global, Insight Venture Partners Investors: 120+ Team Size: CloudCherry CloudCherry is an Experience Management platform that is disrupting the way organizations listen to the Voice of Customer. Through CloudCherry’s flexible, customizable, self-serve solution, businesses today can be present at every step of today’s complex customer journeys, and listen to customers through a variety of ways. Nagendra CL, Prem K Viswanath, Sriram Subramanian, Vijay Lakshmanan, Founders: Vinod Muthukrishnan 2014 Founded in: 7 Million USD Funding Raised: Cisco Investments, Vertex Ventures, IDG Ventures, Chennai Angels Investors: ~80 Team Size: CustomerLabs CustomerLabs is a digital marketing infrastructure platform to manage marketing operations. It lets businesses to track & sync the customer data across platforms without writing any code to various analytics, ads and marketing platforms. , Founders: Asim Ali Vishnu Vankayala 2013 Founded in: 50,000 USD Funding Raised: Times Internet Investors: <10 Team Size: Facilio IoT and ML-driven applications designed to unify your building performance in real-time. Facilio is an all-in-one app suite that unifies facilities and sustainability management across portfolio of large buildings. It helps bring people, machines and buildings come together to work in sync and create beautiful facilities experience — so that there are no more siloed data, teams lagging behind in maintenance or inefficient sustainability performance. , and Founders: Prabhu Ramachandran Rajavel Subramanian Yogendrababu Venkatapathy 2017 Founded in: 1.5 Million USD Funding Raised: Accel Partners Investors: ~24 Team Size: FourKites FourKites is the real-time supply chain visibility platform that Fortune 500 companies and 3PLs trust to track shipment location and temperature and proactively manage exceptions. Using a proprietary predictive algorithm to calculate shipment arrival times, FourKites enables customers to lower their operating costs, improve on-time performance, and strengthen their end-customer relationships. Founders: Mathew Elenjickal 2014 Founded in: 51.5 Million USD Funding Raised: HBS Angels Chicago, Hyde Park Angels, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Otter, Bain Capital Ventures, August Capital Investors: ~160 Team Size: Freshworks (previously Freshdesk) Freshworks creates solutions for support and sales, to engage with and delight both customers and employees. Freshdesk, a Cloud-based customer-support software firm, has been re-branded as Freshworks, which will be the parent company bringing together its suite of business software products — Freshdesk, Freshservice, Freshsales, Freshcaller, Freshchat, Freshmarketer and Freshteam. , Founders: Girish Mathrubootham Shan Krishnasamy 2010 Founded in: 149 Million USD Funding Raised: Accel Partners, Tiger Global Management, CapitalG, Sequoia Capital Investors: 1200+ Team Size: HappyFox HappyFox is a help desk ticketing system that is hosted on cloud, supporting multiple customer support channels like email, voice and live chat. HappyFox is a global help desk being rendered in 35 languages. With differentiation coming from its focus on user experience and simplicity, HappyFox is used by thousands of successful companies of all sizes. Founders: Shalin Jain 2011 Founded in: Bootstrapped Funding Raised: Nil Investors: ~20 Team Size: HippoVideo Hippo Video is a simple and quick video recording and sharing software for the busiest people. You can easily create, edit, store, share and track videos. The paid version lets you record for an unlimited period of time and can be exported to MP4 or stored/uploaded to Google Drive, YouTube, Vimeo and Google Classroom. Hippo Video, easily create or record videos for free at the start of a button. , , Founders: Karthi Mariappan S Nilamchand Jain Srinivasan Krishnan 2016 Founded in: Undisclosed Amount — Seed Round Funding Raised: Kae Capital Investors: <10 Team Size: Indix Indix has built a Products Platform that delivers product information and commerce-ready services for a fraction of the cost of alternatives. Indix combines AI with the largest collection of product data available: price, availability, and seller information, along with code-based identifiers and attributes. Businesses use the Indix Platform to improve the size and quality of their digital product catalog and develop innovative ways to buy and sell products. , , , Founders: Rajesh Muppalla Sanjay Parthasarathy Satya Kaliki Sridhar Venkatesh 2010 Founded in: 30.9 Million USD Funding Raised: Avalon Ventures, Anthemis Group, NGP Capital, Nexus Venture Partners Investors: ~70 Team Size: KiSSFLOW KiSSFLOW is a work automation platform designed for small and mid-sized businesses to automate their internal workflows and business processes. 2013 Founded in: Founders: Suresh Sambandam 1 Million USD Funding Raised: Undisclosed Investors: **Team Size: ~**150 Klenty Klenty is a Software Product that helps B2B Sales representatives to Prospect, Outreach, Follow-up at Scale and thereby achieve higher Sales Process Productivity & increase sales/meeting conversions with reduced manual efforts. Using Klenty, you can understand who is more interested in your product/services and get faster responses from the ideal prospects. You can create more sales closure meetings & opportunities thereby making your sales process smooth & efficient. , Founders: Praveen Kumar Vengat Krishnaraj 2015 Founded in: Nil Funding Raised: Nil Investors: ~20 Team Size: Octoze Octoze’s flagship product is a SaaS based platform to help schools, colleges and universities run more efficiently . It offers administrators, teaching staff, parents and students engage better with each other and drive better results for individuals and institutions. This combines learning management, ERP, reporting in one easy to use cloud based platform. , , Mouli Kumar Founders: Swaminathan Arunachalam Venkateshwara Rao 2014 Founded in: Bootstrapped Funding Raised: Nil Investors: ~40 Team Size: Paperflite Paperflite is a mobile-first sales enablement platform. It helps curate content from marketing and lines up the most appropriate assets in real-time to your sales teams, enabling them deliver the perfect pitch to your prospects. Paperflite is an all-new-yet-instantly-familiar way to share, track and organize all your content across every channel. Paperflite gives you better quality leads and empowers you to crush your targets using your existing content in a whole new way. 2016 Founded in: , , Founders: Vinoth Kumar Anant Bhat Yega Kumarappan 400,000 USD Funding Raised: Chennai Angels Investors: ~20 Team Size: Pipecandy PipeCandy uses data science techniques to discover the right prospects for B2B sales reps and helps them segment the prospects based on nuances specific to their respective industries. , and Founders: Ashwin Ramasamy Shrikanth Jagannathan Murali Vivekanandan 2016 Founded in: 1.1 Million USD Funding Raised: Indian Angel Network, IDG Ventures, Axilor Ventures and Emergent Ventures Investors: ~30 Team Size: Ramco Systems Ramco Systems is a cloud enterprise software company focused on providing multi-tenanted enterprise software to corporates in the area of HCM and Payroll, ERP and M&E MRO for Defence and Civil Aviation, with Mobile first philosophy and In-memory based Planning and Optimization engine. P R Venketrama Raja Founder: 1999 Founded in: 52 Million USD (Post-IPO Equity) Funding Raised: Axis Mutual Fund, Goldman Sachs, HDFC Holdings, Amansa Holdings, J O Hambro Capital Investors: ~3000 Team Size: ReferralYogi ReferralYogi is a SaaS based Customer Advocacy platform that promises sustainable revenue growth for businesses. It helps them identify their promoters, encourage referrals, manage references & create social buzz for their brands. Gandhi Gopinath, Sriram Venkatachalam Founders: 2017 Founded in: Nil Funding Raised: Nil Investors: <10 Team Size: Tagalys Create, curate & launch conversion optimized e-Commerce product listing pages with no engineering support Founded in: 2015 , Founders: Antony Kattukaran Palaniappan Chellappan Nil Funding Raised: Nil Investors: <10 Team Size: Unmetric Unmetric is a social media intelligence platform focused on brands. It is trusted by leading brands to understand their competitor’s efforts, uncover insights based on data and unlock new social strategies. Unmetric combines the power of people and technology to track and analyze the online behavior of over 30,000 brands segmented across 30 sectors for all major social channels. , , Founders: Joe Varghese Kumar Krishnasami Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayan 2011 Founded in: 8.7 Million USD Funding Raised: Nexus Venture Partners, JAFCO Asia Investors: : ~85 Team Size Xobin Xobin’s suite of recruitment softwares cuts down 70% of your recruitment cost and helps you double up the quality of hires. Source,assess and onboard talent into the your team with Xobin’s intelligent recruitment software solutions. , Founders: Amrit Acharya Guruprakash Sivabalan 2016 Founded in: Undisclosed Amount (Seed Round) Funding Raised: Axilor Ventures Investors: : 11 Team Size Zoho Zoho offers a suite of business, collaboration, and productivity applications. The company offers over 30 online applications from CRM to mail, office suite, project management, invoicing, email marketing, social media management, and more. The suite comprises Zoho Writer, Zoho CRM, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Projects, Zoho Meeting, Zoho Creator, Zoho Docs, Zoho Invoice, Zoho People, Zoho Mail, Zoho Assist, Zoho Reports, Zoho Recruit, Zoho Support, Zoho Books, Zoho Bug Tracker, Zoho Campaigns, Zoho Sites, Zoho Connect, and more. 1996 Founded in: Sridhar Vembu and Tony G. Thomas Founders: Bootstrapped Funding Raised: Nil Investors: 5500+ Team Size: Connect with me on Linkedin Disclaimer: I work at Freshworks for Freshsales CRM but this list was put together with an intention to help the SaaS Chennai Community. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer. If I have missed out any of the SaaS companies in Chennai or if you would like to modify any information for any company, drop in a comment and will do the necessary update.

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