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Trojan-Infected Computer Linked To 2008 Spanair Crash

Posted by Soulskill on from the blue-screen-of-literal-death dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Two years ago, Spanair flight JK-5022 crashed shortly after takeoff in Madrid, killing 154 of its 172 passengers and crew. El Pais online newspaper reports that the ground computer responsible for triggering an alarm after three failures are reported in a plane failed to do so. The computer was infected with trojans (Google translation of Spanish original)."

9 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Shit. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Holy Safety-critical system running Windows and apparently not adequately air-gapped, batman!

    1. Re:Shit. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Internet is not the only source of infection. What about removable media, removable drives, or other machines on a private network that can connect to either the Internet or removable media? Perimeter defences are part of good security, but they are not the whole of it.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. What? by miffo.swe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who puts Windows on anything even remotely mission critical? If you could blame someone, it should be the person deciding that.

    --
    HTTP/1.1 400
  3. Nothing to do with the plane by Kupfernigk · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is an aggregating computer at SpanAir HQ which is supposed to record aircraft alerts and notify when too many of them happen too close together. Its only connection with the on-board computer is that somehow it receives the alerts from it. Its OS is unstated. It is not a mission-critical system, it is a decision-support system. Even so, someone looks to have been careless.

    Whoever modded up the above post - you've missed the point. There may have been a fault in the on-board management system - or human error failing to heed a warning - but nothing in TFA suggests that malware was in any way involved on the flight deck.

    --
    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
  4. So, when... by Titan1080 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does the 'War on Trojanists', begin? But seriously, someone wrote that virus. That means that someone, somewhere (probably Estonia), is guilty of killing 154 people.

  5. Summary needs a bit of clarification by ptbarnett · · Score: 5, Informative
    The infected computer was one being used by mechanics to enter maintenance log entries. According to the article, an alert is supposed to be raised if three failures in the same part or subsystem occurred. If I understand the broken English correctly, they would have taken the plane out of service had the maintenance log entry been completed before the plane attempted to take off.

    But, the problem that was supposed to be logged was reportedly an overheated pitot tube. That was not the cause of the crash: the report says that the pilots did not set the flaps correctly and a warning alarm did not go off. This was not related to the problem with the computer being used by mechanics.

    The article appears to be trying to link two independent events: a separate problem with the plane and an error by the pilots. Or maybe it's just the broken English translation.

    1. Re:Summary needs a bit of clarification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Spanish is my mother tongue, so maybe I can shed more light after reading the original article:

      The procedures of Spanair are to log incidences right away whenever they are detected. Three accumulated incidences and the plane is grounded.

      Two incidences had been found the day before the crash. One incidence was detected on the same day of the crash.

      However, the technicians did not enter the incidences into the system right away, because the system was too slow (assumedly due to the malware)

      The system did not trigger any alarm on the same day because the incidences had not been entered by the technicians. The plane was deemed airworthy, and then the accident happened due to the multiple causes described elsewhere.

  6. Swiss cheese by Fzz · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The crash of an airliner these days is rarely due to a single cause. There's a saying in the industry that a crash occurs when the holes in the Swiss cheese happen to line up. This appears to have been the case with this particular crash.
    • The direct cause was that the pilots attempted to take off without setting take-off flaps.
    • They were rushing because they'd had a technical issue, and returned to the terminal after previously taxiing to the runway and completing the take-off checks. So they accidentally skipped the critical check that the flaps were deployed when they lined up to take off the second time.
    • There's a take-off configuration alarm that is supposed to alert the pilots, but it wasn't working.
    • It wasn't working because the engineer removed the circuit breaker that powered it, in order to turn off a stuck heater on a pitot tube that was due to a malfunctioning switch.
    • This particular fault had been noted on previous flights, so should have flagged a warning on the airline's fault monitoring system.
    • The fault monitoring system had a trojan.

    Yup, the holes in the cheese certainly lined up that day. None of these, by itself, would have caused the crash.

  7. Re:Complimentary 7 point Slashdot troll guide... by geekoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Windows is easier. It's a byproduct of sloppy architecture.

    It doesn't mean the others can't be compromised, but it's a fallacy to assume all OS's can be infected with the same level of difficulty.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect