Malware Could Have Played Part in Plane Crash

[kikireeki]

yeah, blame it on hackers, not the poor maintenance!

 

[cmartin011]

They are gonna use a Unix platform not any desktop variant, Simple and reliable the key word simple. anyone with a working airliner computer which im sure you can pick one up at a boneyard. someone with 25 years experience in unit-linux could possibly have done it

 

[wild9]

a central computer system used to monitor technical problems in the aircraft

No warnings were sounded for any of the faults, and investigators say this is because the monitoring system was infected with a trojan.

Sorry, but similar to what other members have said here, I find that hard to swallow. You mean to say there was no proprietary, on-board system that was monitoring the aircraft?? No flight computer? Someone please educate me on this, I stand correct if I am wrong but I don't believe for one second that a modern plane would operate with the intelligence of a dumb terminal.

 

[Guest]

If you ask me, the guy who deisgned the Malware should be found and shot.... As well as the dumbass IT technician that was supposed to keep a clean and workable PC.
And the guy who got the malware on the PC in the first place thinking that it would be funny to show his colleagues the pictures of his kid that he took over the week-end, and plugged his home USB Key on the maintenance computer!!!
Shoot them all...

 

[impulse fire]

i guess now they should start scanning the computers before every flight. but use something decent like avast, its free.

 

[extremepcs]

Wow, if it had to run Windows, it should have been locked down with deep freeze or at least steady state.

 

[utgardaloki]

Oh dandy! What about..

"This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down"

I'll never fly again.

 

[tommysch]

[citation][nom]treefrog07[/nom]The cyber-wars have spilled over from financial and sex crimes to murder. More cyber-warriors needed with the proper authority and armaments.[/citation]

We still have kinetic weapons...

 

[Wheat_Thins]

[citation][nom]swell9[/nom]To all Windows haters, Unix is vulnerable to hacker attacks. I run a number of Unix-based servers and they require almost as much secuirty patching as Windows OS.[/citation]

0.o

Yes they do require just as much patching but the thing is that they ACTUALLY do get patched when a vulnerability is found instead of just sitting around with holes in the OS for months at a time like the Windows environment.

 

[hoofhearted]

I see two things coming out of this:

(A) Justification for a more comprehensive mission critical security system. (more $$)

(B) Find and make an example of whoever created this malware. It would be great if some individual got the death penalty for this. That would send a message and hopefully reduce some of the mal-coding going on in the wild.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

Why aren't they using Linux? I get it! Let's take a chance!

 

[mlopinto2k1]

[citation][nom]jj463rd[/nom]I never saw which operating system the central computer used.It's not been disclosed at all yet.Wait till the facts come in.It could very well be a Unix based OS as well.[/citation]With malware? I think not. Not in an airport terminal.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

[citation][nom]Spanky Deluxe[/nom]Why on Earth were they running Windows?? For this kind of thing a Unix based system would be a far more suitable choice.[/citation]My first thoughts exactly.

 

[COLGeek]

The security architecture that would allow these conditions to exist, regardless of the OS used or the level of internet connectivity involved, is attrocious at best and criminal at worst.

Mission critical systems should always be compartmentalized (isolated from non-mission critical interfaces) to prevent such events from occuring. There is also the issue of an apparent lack of redundancy in this design.

There is no excuse to allow this to happen.

 

[decepticon]

And this is why creators of malware should get the death penalty. It has gone from nuisance to deadly...and this was 2+ years ago?! Wow. I have a new hatred for these infections.

 

[Guest]

lol @ all those people who think that airplanes run a commercially available or even a variant of some open source OS

these are classified (for good reason) custom built system written in machine code, extremely streamlined, designed and written for the specific purpose of operating and monitoring an aircraft, even if somehow it was possible for a piece of malware to enter the system it simply die of starvation having no recognizable protocol or port to latch onto

 

[pepe2907]

The company is searching for excuses to limit their own responsibility for the crash. Reasonable questions that emerge are, as was mentioned before: what OS and soft they are using on the mission critical hardware and why? Do they use some cheap desktop OS and soft, or alike, to save some money in expense of people's safety? Probably the plane manufacturing company should be held responsible here. And they should be sued as for using cheap inappropriate materials. No comment on possible conection of mission critical hardware to a public network.
What's about suing hacker/s/ who wrote the mallware - good idea actually, but you probably should consider also suing the gun manufacturers for shootings.

 

[Guest]

It's an embedded system in a plane....what is it running Windows? It should be a closed system. Do they have a USB port next to the altimeter?

 

[f-14]

find the people who wrote the malware and openly execute them on live television for the world to see, and make sure every one knows why.

 

[jwl3]

When are they going to start dragging these malware thugs out from their holes and shoot them? We still give these scum slaps on the wrist as punishment. Anyone who's had to format their hard drive and reinstall all their programs (all the while losing a large chunk of their personal files)knows that agony that these scum create. Multiply that by the thousands that get affected from that one virus and you have thousands of hours of lost productivity.