Posted on 08/22/2010 12:52:55 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
154 lives were lost when Spanair Flight 5022 crashed moments after taking off from Madrid-Barajas International Airport in 2008. Now documents from an investigation into the incident are showing that a malware infection may have been to blame. According to the investigation, the computer system used to monitor technical problems on the plane was infected with a trojan. As a result, there were no alerts or warnings for three technical issues which "if detected, may have prevented the plane from taking off." The investigation is still not complete and authorities are trying to determine just how the malware got onto the computer system in question. [MSNBC] Photo by Andy Mitchell Update: To clarify, the computer system in question is described as being on the ground—not on the plane itself—and used to monitor the state of critical systems prior to take off.
You are free to interpret Jim Robinson' s quite explicit and straight forward prohibition of personal attacks and flames however you wish. Those who have interpreted too freely by starting the personal attacks have felt his wrath. He does not mind discussing hardware or software. He draws the line at incivility.
Absolutely!
I delved deeper than just the Gizmodo article on this issue and the inboard warning system was not working. Among the warnings the pilot did NOT get was the "FLAPS NOT EXTENDED" voice alert on the start of his take-off roll out. But let's just go with what the Gizmodo article reports that you claim only reports that a computer had nothing to do with the events that lead up to the deaths of all these people.
"According to the investigation, the computer system used to monitor technical problems on the plane was infected with a trojan. As a result, there were no alerts or warnings for three technical issues which "if detected, may have prevented the plane from taking off."
Had the ground based test computer been doing its job, perhaps the failed inboard warning computer would have been detected and either red tagged the flight or been replaced before take-off, thereby warning the pilot that the co-pilot had neglected to set the flaps in take off position. In other words, a critical safety warning system relied on by the pilot to warn him that thing were OK with the aircraft, FAILED and was not detected as having failed despite a routine, required check, because the device used to do that routine pre-flight check, was infected with a Trojan. I rest my case.
Using their paper checklist would have avoided the issue. They didn’t appear to have consulted their checklist. Perhaps if the co-pilot hadn’t been playing with his ipod he would have thought of the checklist.
You are really something, driftdiver. You make this totally false and absurd claim with absolutely no evidence and you accuse ME of attempting to start a Flame war. Sheesh!
The evidence is that a computer, brand and OS unknown, but reasonable persons can draw their own conclusions, infected by a Trojan malware of unknown type, DID contribute to this tragedy. You spend a lot of posts trying to deny it. Evidence ALSO indicates that human error, most likely on the part of the co-pilot who was responsible for setting the condition of the flaps, was the proximate cause of the accident. Had the computer NOT been compromised, the evidence indicates it is likely the human error COULD have been caught before the accident occurred and 180 lives saved! It was not.
I would argue that a strong case of Felony Murder could be brought against the author of the Trojan that infected that piece of test equipment.
There is NO evidence that an Apple product of any kind had any contribution to this event at all. Your false claim is exactly the type of DELIBERATE FLAME BAITING tripe that Jim Robinson has made off limits on FreeRepublic. You posted it with sole purpose of attempting to get an intemperate response. I refuse to play.
Once again, the pilots caused the accident. You can try to blame all the other stuff but they didn’t do their job.
The reason the airline is trying to blame malware is to deflect liability. Like the pilots didn’t do their job, the maintenance crews failed in theirs as well.
In fact the maintenance team did their job so poorly there are some reports they will be charged criminally.
If no apple product was involved why have you started the old apple/windows wars? Why was apple even mentioned in this thread?
You were the one who mentioned Apple, negatively, deliberately so...
You falsely claimed the co-pilot was negligent and Apple was involved because the co-pilot was:
Reply 19 — "Probably playing with his new ipad."
Then you repeated your false and inflamatory assertion of Apple involvement and raised the ante by removing the "probably"—as though his involvement with an Apple product was an accepted fact—and baldly stating:
Reply 43 — "Perhaps if the co-pilot hadn’t been playing with his ipod he would have thought of the checklist."
I have merely cut through your bull and posted the facts as reported.
DO YOU HAVE ANY PROOF AT ALL THAT WHAT YOU SAID IS TRUE???
You are the one who has slung the ad hominems, driftdiver. In fact, in one of your first posts you deliberately maligned me by claiming:
Reply 18 — "Yeah sorry, wasn’t too clear on that point. Swordmaker must be behind all these stories blaming the OS."
All of these are totally gratuitous slurs and slams at Apple and then me. Cut it out.
No, Windows isn't trusted for that. Airlines don't even run the avionics on Linux, although some use it for the entertainment systems on a separate network from the avionics. They use real-time operating systems like Integrity. Operating systems like this are designed from the ground-up for fault tolerance and availability.
It's still natively backwards-compatible with Windows 3.1. I'd be scared if Model-T parts still fit my car.
I blame Bill Gates switching NT midstream from a modernized version of VMS (one of the most solid OSs in history) with a newly-designed modern API to a 32-bit version of Windows 3.x. It ended up only being designed to support small workgroups, nothing more. When I think of what Windows NT could have been...
Looking at your comments here, what do you think about Windows shutting down air traffic control communications over the Southwest some years back?
They replaced a UNIX-based communications system with one running Windows 2000. The system used RPC. Windows 2000, and well through XP IIRC, had a bug where RPC would start taking all the system resources, basically making the computer unresponsive. This happened when the 32-bit RPC clock rolled over at 2^32 milliseconds, or 49.7 days. To avoid the bug the authors of the commo software put into the user manual that it was supposed to be restarted about every 45 days to avoid this, and programmed auto-restart code just before the 49.7 days. I presume the latter is because it’s easier for users to respond to a restart than wonder why commo is randomly getting dropped as the system slowly eats itself and dies.
Well, somebody didn’t read the manual, didn’t restart, and the system restarted itself, shutting down commo for a while. You might want to blame the developer, but that’s wrong. A system like that shouldn’t be regularly restarted, especially when they’re used to UNIX that just keeps running. The eventual “solution” was to put in an alarm before it shuts down. All of that was hacks to get around a fundamental operating system flaw.
Here’s a hint: If you want a system with high uptime, don’t use one that you KNOW FOR A FACT will crash on you every 49.7 days. Find an operating system that doesn’t have that flaw.
I don't give a hoot about operating systems. But, I fail to see how drawing a conclusion with no information can be reasonable. In fact, it would seem to be arbitrary - the opposite of reasonable.
“Here’s a hint: If you want a system with high uptime, don’t use one that you KNOW FOR A FACT will crash on you every 49.7 days. Find an operating system that doesn’t have that flaw.”
Having a mission critical system that could result in deaths rely on a single desktop is foolhardy, regardless of the OS.
The accident was the result of pilot error. The pilots did not do their job. Perhaps they were trusting to the poorly designed automated systems, a sure sign of their inexperience and poor training.
On another note I wonder how many times this story will get posted.
“It’s still natively backwards-compatible with Windows 3.1. I’d be scared if Model-T parts still fit my car. “
Well to be accurate the model-T has a windshield and so does your modern car. Doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable.
Choice of OS can just make it even more foolhardy. I'm more fond of RTOS for this kind of work, although depending on the criticality I could see UNIX or a stripped special-purpose Linux. Minix would be about perfect for this, if it were more developed.
Part of the problem is also monitoring. Not knowing the desktop had a problem and was not providing the necessary function is a huge issue.
You can run VisiCalc on Windows 7 natively. The Model-T windshield fits on the modern car. To be fair, Microsoft did the right thing with 64-bit Win7. It isn't quite as backwards compatible, and thus a lot more stable and secure.
All of this points to serious issues in the maintenance shop. Problem still comes down to the pilots not doing their jobs.
It causes random popup ads that are very annoying, but it also hijacks my search engine results (google, yahoo, and others) When I click on a link from the result set it goes to an annoying ad.
Like I always tell people, security is a process. That includes the human element. This could have been avoided with proper lock-down of the system and constant security and availability monitoring. Or it could have been avoided with an RTOS since they don't require so much babysitting.
Mistakes all around, definitely. But if you're going to have a mission-critical backup warning system (people do make mistakes) where lives are at stake, then you don't entrust it to a cobbled-together system using a standard off-the-shelf commercial OS, certainly not one commonly known to get infected with viruses and trojans. I remember when it came out that Airbus was using Linux in their planes, they were quick to reassure everybody that it is NOT used in the avionics or other critical systems. Relax everybody, we're not entrusting your safety to a generic commercial operating system.
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