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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majord...@metzdowd.com