CISA says all versions of Furuno Electric’s FA-50 Class B AIS Transponder can be altered on in-vessel networks, and some configurations can be changed from the management screen without authentication. The advisory matters because Furuno ended production in October 2020 and says software updates will no longer be provided.
One flaw accepts a credential set that lets someone on the vessel network use the settings screen to change the device. The other skips the login check on certain management-screen paths, so access to the interface can be enough to rewrite transponder settings.
For operators, the exposure sits in deployed vessels that still run FA-50 units and allow that internal access. The question now is not whether a patch will arrive, but which installations still depend on an end-of-life transponder as part of their navigation stack.