On Aug 24, 2010, at 12:32 19PM, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 03:35:45PM -0400, Steven Bellovin wrote:
>>
>> And the articles I've seen do not say that the problem caused the
>> crash. Rather, they say that a particular, important computer was
>> infected with malware; I saw no language (including in the Google
>> translation of the original article at
>> http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/ordenador/Spanair/anotaba/fallos/aviones/tenia/virus/elpepiesp/20100820elpepinac_11/Tes,
>> though the translation has some crucial infelicities) that said
>> "because of the malware, bad things happened. It may be like the
>> reactor computer with a virus during a large blackout -- yes, the
>> computer was infected, but that wasn't what caused the problem.
>
> The problem was evidently a couple of maintenance technicians who didn't
> do their jobs correctly. The computer comes into the matter because one
> of its jobs was to activate an alarm if a critical system whose failure
> *was* the proximate cause of the crash was not working properly. It
> didn't activate the alarm, which would have led to the aircraft being
> prohibited from taking off, because of the malware.
>
What I have not seen are any statements attributed to the investigating agency
that support your last conclusion: that the malware is what caused the alarm
failure.
I saw a very good summary of the official findings; I'll ask permission to
repost them.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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