The Chris Roberts “Hacked Plane” Story Smells Like an FBI Psyop | American Everyman

by Scott Creighton

The key to this story is the FBI (once again) and Chris Roberts’ intimate relationship with them.

For those of you who know me, you know I don’t do “Henny Penny” stories very often. I don’t huff and puff and screech about Russian nukes flying over the North Pole and I don’t publish bullshit about the New Black Panthers (Cointelpro) promising to kill cops in Ferguson or Baltimore.

However, with that said, this latest story that’s running amok in the MSM about how a cyber intel expert claims to have been able to hack into a plane’s on-board “infotainment” system and from there cause the plane to “fly sideways” is something that needs to be addressed quickly I would imagine.

According to the FBI affidavit, however, when he mentioned this to agents last February he told them that he also had briefly commandeered a plane during one of those flights…

The affidavit, however, does not indicate exactly which flight he allegedly caused to turn to fly to the side. WIRED

Let me first explain the basics of the story. According to the official version, last month Chris Roberts boarded a United Airlines flight from Denver to Chicago (keep Denver in mind, it’s important later)

During that flight, Chris sent out a Tweet:

Chris was taken off his connecting flight at his final destination and interviewed for several hours. They wanted to know if he intended to take control of the flight. Chris said “no’ he didn’t in a widely circulated WIRED magazine interview which just came out.

The cyber security expert claims he was making a joke… on Twitter… about taking over the controls of a plane… on Twitter… the cyber security expert did.

The tweet was meant as a sarcastic joke; a reference to how he had tried for years to get Boeing and Airbus to heed warnings about security issues with their passenger communications systems. His tweet about the Engine Indicator Crew Alert System, or EICAS, was a reference to research he’d done years ago on vulnerabilities in inflight infotainment networks, vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to access cabin controls and deploy a plane’s oxygen masks. WIRED

Then he claimed he was surprised when they slapped the cuffs on him after his connecting flight and took his laptops.

Upon landing in Syracuse, two FBI agents and two local police officers escorted him from the plane and interrogated him for several hours. They also seized two laptop computers and several hard drives and USB sticks. WIRED

I’m not a cyber security expert like good old Chris here is, but I have enough common sense to know if I sat my butt in coach seat on some SouthWest Airlines flight and Tweeted “hey, wouldn’t it be funny :) if I set off a bomb on this flight and killed everyone in a fiery ball of screaming Jihad?” I might just expect a gaggle of about 50 Redbull drinking overly testosteroned guys to storm the plane in a few minutes to shoot me, beat me, tase me, cuff me, shoot me again and then drag what’s left of my fat lifeless body to the nearest exit.

I mean I do know such things as Twitter are monitored and I don’t even have to get a paycheck from a cyber intel company to know that. So it’s a reasonable assumption that Chris knew it as well.

Now you have to understand: Chris had been in communication with the FBI for at least a half a year (actually MUCH LONGER than that, but more on that later) because according to the story, in February they had finally taken notice of his years long effort to supposedly blow the whistle on a vulnerability with “some” planes’ on-board entertainment systems.

According to Chris, some unscrupulous characters might just be able to reach under the passenger seats of “some planes” and bust open a control panel box (Chris says he did this himself on an earlier flight by “squeezing” it) and then, without anyone noticing, attach a CAT6 cable with a “modified connector” to the inner workings of said box and with a few “standard” user IDs and “standard” passwords, gain access to the inflight movie selection or some other such valuable intel such as fuel intact systems.

He then claims that from there it’s “just a matter of getting past a few firewalls” and presto, he’s essentially at the controls of the plane.

When this incident happened back in April, the Washington Post covered the story and posted this ludicrous graphic attempting to show just how easy it was for “the terrorists” to take control of your flight.

As you can see from the image, the implication is that some “ISIS” guy with a CAT5 cable on-board can fly your plane for you or some al-CIAdah dude with an Iphone in Jersey could as well.

“The SKY IS FALLING!” the SKY IS FALLING!

Well, not really.

Turns out Chris openly admits to meeting with the FBI in February and then again for longer “a few weeks later” (5 weeks? in April perhaps?) That was just a short time before his joking Tweet in April which briefly brought this whole “hacking a flight” story to the national spotlight.

Last February, the FBI in Denver, where Roberts is based, requested a meeting. They discussed his research for an hour, and returned a couple weeks later for a discussion that lasted several more hours. They wanted to know what was possible and what exactly he and his colleague had done. WIRED

So, the FBI decided to chat with this cyber security expert a short time before the guy posted his attention getting Tweet while sitting on a flight out of Denver, where he had been meeting with the FBI in the first place.

Ok, that could just be a coincidence and Chris Roberts could just be an idiot, right?

Well, as I mentioned before, Chris’ connections to the FBI go a bit further back than February. This is where this stupid story gets interesting and a bit scary.

The guy on the far left is Chris Roberts. The photo is taken from the webpage of a company he worked for called Cyopsis LLC.

Cyopsis has an interesting history. Back in 2012, Cyopsis was hired by the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado to try to find anything that looks incriminating for James Holmes or anyone else for that matter at the school. They ended up just spying on all the students while trying to find “evidence” that would prove Holmes’ guilt.

Essentially, they were trying to help the FBI build it’s case against their patsy.

Look at that photo above. See that guy in the middle standing next to Chris? That’s Kevin Knierim. Kevin was with the FBI for 15 years.

That’s right. Chris’ boss in that business was an ex-FBI agent.

Kevin Knierim is a co-founder and Managing Director of Human Intelligence for investigative service provider Cyopsis.   As an FBI Agent for 15 years, Mr. Knierim had lead investigative responsibility for many complex financial crimes and schemes to defraud, including securities fraud, bank fraud, commodities fraud, health care fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, and false claims against the United States.  The views expressed here are those of the individual author and are not necessarily those of the ABA or the Task Force. American Bar Association

Kevin got a little public attention when he did an interview for CNBC talking about how the SWAT were justified when they clamped down on the people of Boston looking for one unarmed teenager who was on the loose.

What other large scale incidents has Kevin been involved with? Well…

Kevin Knierim spent 15 years with the FBI and responded to both to Columbine and Waco. He talked to 9Wants to Know Monday on the bombing investigation. 9News 2013

And that’s not all. According to his biopage, he was an FBI sniper… at Waco.

While with the FBI, Mr. Knierim was a senior member of a FBI SWAT team for 13 years as an observer/sniper and assaulter, where he participated in local and national operations such as the Waco siege, the Eric Rudolph manhunt, the Columbine tragedy, the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah, and the Texas Seven capture, among others. Kevin’s biopage

Now let’s see… this guy Chris is connected with a former boss and possible friend who is connected either intimately or tangentially with:

You might say, well, that’s all well and good but that doesn’t mean Kevin is still connected with the FBI. After all, he went into private business back in 2006. I can understand that reasoning… however….

Mr. Knierim has an inactive CPA license in Colorado and is a member of a variety of organizations, such as the Energy Security Counsel, KPMG Audit Committee Roundtable, InfraGard, Institute of Internal Auditors and is the current Treasurer of the Society of Former FBI Agents in Denver.  Kevin’s biopage

So yeah, Kevin Knierim is still involved with the FBI in Denver.

Getting back to Chris Roberts.

So, Roberts had a long-standing connection to the FBI in Denver who apparently contacted him just before his little stunt on that flight from Denver to Chicago.

According to the FBI, Roberts had in his possession at the time they stopped him after his connecting flight, all the materials he would have needed to hack that plane and take control of it. The FBI says he had the materials and the stated willingness to do it. So what did they do?

… the FBI believed that Roberts “had the ability and the willingness to use the equipment then with him to access or attempt to access the IFE and possibly the flight control systems on any aircraft equipped with an IFE systems, and that it would endanger public safety to allow him to leave the Syracuse airport that evening with that equipment.” WIRED

Here’s what the FBI did to Chris Roberts:

Roberts has not been arrested, nor charged with a crime. ARS

That’s right. With far more evidence than the FBI has had against any number of the patsies they’ve set up over the years, they decide to let Chris Roberts skate, free as a bird, with all the knowledge in his little head of how to hack into a plane and alter it’s flight in whatever manner he chooses.

He even flew home.

Back to his friend with the FBI.

The friend connected to:

Conclusion

Yes, Chris Roberts knew full well what the result of his Tweet would be. And yes, he was probably asked to do it by the FBI themselves through his former boss Kevin Knierim. There is no other explanation as to why he would be so stupid as to Tweet something like that and no other explanation as to why he is a free man today. He was simply doing what he does: contracting for domestic law enforcement.

Of course the scary question is “why?” and that is up for debate.

Perhaps some company wants to make some money on a mandatory retooling of on-board “infotainment” systems.

Perhaps it’s just more fear-mongering from our friends at the FBI.

Or perhaps this is the pretext for something much worse which will require a history being fabricated of “terrorists” being able to hack commercial airliners and cause them to crash unexpectedly.

Maybe it’s all of the above. Maybe none.

Whatever the case may be, Chris Roberts’ connection to the FBI in this case is impossible to overlook due to a number of rather odd decisions being made by all parties involved. It has the stink of a hastily cobbled together FBI psyop not unlike the many that have come before it.

Notice the name of the company he and Kevin worked for? “Cyopsis”? As in cy-op?

I don’t know what to make of this but I’m staying off commercial flights for a while. You might think of doing the same. Now that’s not a “the Ruskies sent Nukes over the North Pole!” story… that’s just common sense.

——

Thank you very much.

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Filed under: Chris Roberts, CIA are the Real Terrorists, Scott Creighton

https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/the-chris-roberts-hacked-plane-story-smells-like-an-fbi-psyop/