Malware: More Than an Annoyance
Usually, we just think of malware being an annoyance - costing us time, or perhaps money. Seems it can be much, much worse:
Authorities investigating the 2008 crash of Spanair flight 5022 have discovered a central computer system used to monitor technical problems in the aircraft was infected with malware. An internal report issued by the airline revealed the infected computer failed to detect three technical problems with the aircraft, which if detected, may have prevented the plane from taking off, according to reports in the Spanish newspaper, El Pais. Flight 5022 crashed just after takeoff from Madrid-Barajas International Airport two years ago today, killing 154 and leaving only 18 survivors.
That's a whole lot more serious than a spam spewing PC bot. Wow. Just... wow.
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Comments
Re: Malware: More Than an Annoyance
[Randal L. Schwartz] August 21, 2010 15:54:36.828
Windows should just be forbidden in any sort of life-critical path. Period.
Re: Malware: More Than an Annoyance
[W^L+] August 21, 2010 21:45:16.473
When I read the story, there were multiple failures beforehand, even before a mechanic disabled an error probe. Don't get me wrong. I agree with Randal that consumer-grade software does not belong in such an environment. But blaming the computer is an easy way to let local managers escape the blame for decisions they made which led to the tragedy.