Boeing hit by computer virus
Mar 28, 2018, 6:04 pm
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Boeing hit by computer virus
After the cyberattack struck, Mike VanderWel, chief engineer at Boeing Commercial Airplane production engineering, sent out an alarming memo calling for “All hands on deck.”
“It is metastasizing rapidly out of North Charleston and I just heard 777 (automated spar assembly tools) may have gone down,” VanderWel wrote, adding his concern that the virus could hit equipment used in functional tests of airplanes ready to roll out and potentially “spread to airplane software.”Late Wednesday afternoon however, Boeing issued a statement dialing back those fears.
“Our cybersecurity operations center detected a limited intrusion of malware that affected a small number of systems,” Boeing said. “Remediations were applied and this is not a production and delivery issue.”
Nevertheless, the attack triggered widespread alarm within the company.
VanderWel’s message said the attack required “a battery-like response,” a reference to the 787 in-flight battery fires in 2013 that grounded the world’s fleet of Dreamliners and led to an extraordinary three-month-long engineering effort to find a fix.
“It is metastasizing rapidly out of North Charleston and I just heard 777 (automated spar assembly tools) may have gone down,” VanderWel wrote, adding his concern that the virus could hit equipment used in functional tests of airplanes ready to roll out and potentially “spread to airplane software.”Late Wednesday afternoon however, Boeing issued a statement dialing back those fears.
“Our cybersecurity operations center detected a limited intrusion of malware that affected a small number of systems,” Boeing said. “Remediations were applied and this is not a production and delivery issue.”
Nevertheless, the attack triggered widespread alarm within the company.
VanderWel’s message said the attack required “a battery-like response,” a reference to the 787 in-flight battery fires in 2013 that grounded the world’s fleet of Dreamliners and led to an extraordinary three-month-long engineering effort to find a fix.
OK, you figure Boeing has a big IT dept. which can do restores from backups if necessary, so you wouldn't expect them to be so vulnerable to having their operations disrupted.
But there was concern that the virus could spread to airplane software?
So a Windows virus could potentially infect systems on planes? They're running Windows, one of the most-targeted platforms by malware, on board planes?
I've seen IFE systems reboot and you could see they're running Linux. But Windows on more crucial systems used to operate airliners?
Oy Vey!
Mar 28, 2018, 7:02 pm
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The use of Linux on IFE systems is certainly linked to Linux being a much lighter OS than the other available options. Anything more is going to be an overkill. An IFE needs to play movies, music, and games, and show a moving map.
Mar 29, 2018, 10:38 am
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The local London Underground station clearly shows Windows boot-up screens when the information system crashes.
A lot of ATMs have been upgraded in the last few years, but yes, a *lot* of them ran embedded XP (which was on a different support schedule than consumer/office XP).
wg
A lot of ATMs have been upgraded in the last few years, but yes, a *lot* of them ran embedded XP (which was on a different support schedule than consumer/office XP).
wg
Mar 29, 2018, 10:48 am
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Airlines have backup planes in case of mechanical problems. That doesn't mean every flight will still leave on time after MX because there are backups.
And yes, many ATM's still run a version of Wndows XP (embedded), which has roots back to 2001.
Last edited by CPRich; Mar 29, 2018 at 10:54 am