Los Angeles Air Traffic System Collapsed Due To A Computer Glitch

Hundreds of planes scheduled to fly over Los Angeles were grounded or delayed recently as a result of a computer glitch in April, it has been revealed

According to Reuters, air traffic controllers had to use pens, paper and telephones to relay important information as the computer systems crashed due to a cyclical error which made them run out of memory.

Some experts say that a similar incident could be caused deliberately by hackers, while others argue it would be impossible to recreate such specific conditions.

No-Fly zone

The problems began on 30 April, after the $2.4 billion air traffic control system built by Lockheed Martin failed to obtain altitude information for a single U-2 spy plane which was flying over the area.

The system got stuck in a loop while trying to re-route the surrounding planes without having the necessary data points. According to Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) spokeswoman Laura Brown, this “used a large amount of available memory and interrupted the computer’s other flight-processing functions”.

As a result, the systems was completely unable to access parts of the US skies from West Coast to Arizona and from Nevada to the Mexico border.

The service was restored less than an hour after the outage, and the incident didn’t result in any deaths or injuries. It did, however, cause inconvenience to thousands of passengers who had their flights delayed or cancelled.

In response, the FAA said it has changed the way traffic controllers obtain flight plan information and upgraded the computer systems with more memory, which should prevent similar episodes from occuring in the future.

Sources told Reuters that the original error is very difficult to replicate and added that there’s no indication that it could be used to carry out a cyber attack. Digital attacks against physical infrastructure are a hot topic among cyber security experts and politicians, but the real examples of such activity are very few, the most famous being the case of Stuxnet, used against uranium centrifuges in Iran.

German Security Researcher Hugo Teso previously claimed he found a combination of software flaws that enabled him to hijack a virtual model of a plane using an Android app, send it in different directions and adjust its speed.

Earlier this year, the FAA and the US National Security Agency established a centre in Maryland to monitor the networks used by civil aviation organisations and improve their safety.

Even though the same air control error is unlikely to appear again, experts warn that the incident should not be downplayed: “If it’s now understood that there are flight plans that cause the automated system to fail, then the flight plan is an ‘attack surface,'” Dan Kaminsky, co-founder of White Ops, told Reuters.

“It’s certainly possible that there are other forms of flight plans that could cause similar or even worse effects,” he added. “This is part of the downside of automation.”

How well do you know network security? Try our quiz and find out!