Lost Soldiers Of Darkness

[Weststar]

Another reason to never use personal devises on an important work computer, they are many holes in the story but its scary to think about

Malware-infected mainframe may have doomed spanish airliner

[Guest]

My major concern with this (regardless of pilot error) is why would the mainframe have malware. That means it either has access to the internet directly or indirectly. Why would a sensitive piece of equipment like that be allowed that access? If it did come from somewhere else (i.e. bigger mainframe at the airport that it syncs up with) why have they not found the malware there yet?

I guess like many companies now a days, IT security is just an after thought.

[Weststar]

could happen as easily as plugging in a contaminated mp3 player

[Guest]

Still extremely unlikely. Even if we give an airline no credit and assume they are running a standard Linux OS on their mainframe and the malware was targeted towards it, the odds of them letting a pilot or crew member have access to it via a USB port is unlikely. Network infiltration is much more likely because Joe Blow with MP3 player isn't really going to pick up malware targeted toward a mainframe OS on any device he could plug into the plane.