Malware Could Have Played Part in Plane Crash

[zaznet]

This is just the sort of accident related to malware that has been needed to start seeing serious felony charges being brought against the authors of such software. A crack down is around the corner with these victims as martyrs to the cause.

 

[wawa sxm]

[citation][nom]mrmoo500[/nom]I bet the person who looked up p0rn at work really regretted it.[/citation]

lmao!!

 

[dextermat]

Those damn Taliban or Russian hackers.....

the cold war ain't over!!!!!

2012 you are not coming fast enough!!!

 

[maestintaolius]

[citation][nom]FloKid[/nom]Good. The idiot hackers should go to jail for something.[/citation]
I'd say find the dork who wrote the trojan in the first place and charge him with the deaths of the passengers.

 

[lashton]

[citation][nom]Trueno07[/nom]Better question, why are they connected to the internet? I would think that everything should be kept local is possible for security's sake. If they can get malware they can get hacked.[/citation]
Not really thats a linux phobe thing to say

 

[lashton]

[citation][nom]emjayy[/nom]I saw this story a few days ago. This article's got the story sort of mixed up. In this accident, there were two warning systems that failed to work correctly - one on the ground and one inside the plane. The trojan was found to have infected a MAINFRAME used by the Spanair airline to log all aircraft faults and automatically flag aircraft that needed to be grounded for repairs. This was a computer system that was on the ground in their headquarters. The craft that crashed had 3 faults logged against it that would have forced the airline to ground it. But the malware infestation (reportedly a trojan) prevented the software on the mainframe from working properly and it failed to red-flag the aircraft. Unfortunately, one of the 3 faults in the aircraft was a failure of the circuitry that powers the Central Aural Warning System (CAWS), which is responsible for giving audible warnings when certain things go wrong in the plane or if the plane is incorrectly configured. Normally, that's the alarm system that would warn the pilots if they forget to lower the flaps and slats when putting the plane into takeoff configuration. Unfortunately, it seems the pilots forgot to lower the flaps on the worst possible day - when the CAWS which is there to prevent such a mishap was not working - so they didn't realize their error and the plane stalled as it was taking off (the video of the actual crash is on YouTube). The plane crashed because of pilot error, but the trojan played a role by preventing the doomed aircraft with the flawed CAWS from being grounded in a timely manner, allowing the pilots to make the one error that they couldn't afford to make on that aircraft at that particular moment. What are the odds?[/citation]
as a pilot myself i feel for the dead people but thats just a stupid error not putting flaps down on takeoff, the trojan would not have made the pilots put the flaps down because thats part of the checklist and should HAVE been DONE!

 

[itpro]

Sorry to disappoint all of you Windows bashers, but malware had absolutely nothing to do with this accident. The plane itself was an older vintage that had no onboard computer to speak of. The official report of the accident listed pilot error for having the flaps in the wrong position. Yes, the warning light was not working, but the pilots knew this and had the plane checked out by the mechanics before the flight, who cleared it for takeoff.

This report started by a misquote from a Spanish newspaper picked up by MSNBC, and has spread like wildfire on the web. I receive emails all the time with junk stories like this, but expect more from Tom's Hardware. Does no one do fact checking anymore? MSNBC has no creditability anymore, but Tom's should have known better.

 

[HavoCnMe]

He who has access and maintains that computer is at fault no one else. That mofo should burn at the stake.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

[citation][nom]MachineOS[/nom]lol @ all those people who think that airplanes run a commercially available or even a variant of some open source OSthese 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[/citation]Oh yeah? Then explain why a piece of malware might have caused this to happen? Why would they even use the word MALWARE if they had machines purposely built to do specific tasks... wouldn't they have said something like, "Someone has deliberately infected our unique systems and caused a plane to crash"...?

 

[Guest]

@mlopinto2k1

wanna read some of the comments, cause it has been clarified that there was a whole bunch of misreporting, the malware did not infect the plane but rather a PC which flagged maintenance issues, the plane was at no time infected, if you seriously think that they run commercial airplanes on windows x or linux y then you seriously have no idea

explain to me why the bloody hell would an airplane need to run mouse drivers ????? do you know how much junk goes into the kind of operating systems your talking about just for standard joe consumer convenience, and you think they need that on a plane why?

as stated earlier these are custom built systems designed for almost instantaneous interpretation of flight commands, each line of code is audited to high heaven (FAA requirements)

you think your damn OS on the life support systems in hospitals are linux or windows based? and thats just one life, when we talking of lives in the hundreds, custom built systems are the only way to go

 

[Gin Fushicho]

And that is why companies need to CONSTANTLY upgrade! Maybe this will teach a lesson....

 

[eddieroolz]

In the future...

*alarm beeps*
*voice comes on*
Malware: We are trojan.Win32.whateverthecrap. We have taken over your plane system.
Malware: If you want to live, pay to account 3283923203013281098 $1million now.
Malware: Otherwise, we will render the stabilizers inoperable.
Malware: Don't take the chance. Do it now!

 

[Guest]

malware can not bring down a plane's computers, it close to impossible to compromise the computer system on a plane and make it crash like this, simply because of the way they are setup.

Planes have an average of 5 computers on board, standard operations will have 3 active 1 backup and 1 offline, if at anytime there is a discrepancy between the computers, the two systems that collude will override the 1 system that doesn't, that 1 system is then forced into a diagnostic mode and or rebooted, if the system is unrecoverable then the backup system takes over it's place. Should 2 systems enter an unrecoverable state the computer systems enters a new configuration whereby 1 system acts as primary and the other as a secondary mirror which allows instantaneous transfer of controls from the primary to secondary should the primary become compromised.

The 5th system is also powered up the moment 2 systems become unrecoverable, this is a unique system, it is never connected to the 4 other system and remains unpowered until needed, this is to prevent cross contamination and also allows it be unaffected by EMP abnormalities, it is also a reduced functionality system where by everything but the bare essentials for flying and landing a plane has been removed (based upon the principle that any extra function is another thing that can go wrong)

Even then there is a final fail safe system that is activated should things look like it's all going south, the ram air turbine is deployed and the mechanical/electrical manual controls are activated allow the pilot to take direct control of the plane

unfortunately no amount of backups and safety feature will compensate for stupid operator errors......

 

[aaron686]

LIES! They were just trying to run Crysis.