6 ms·

Just gotta ask: Southwest, NOTAM, and now this… Is some group pen-testing?

scrumper 4y ago
Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, three times is enemy action. It could be Russia, Iran, China, climate direct action groups (probably not y'all qaeda though). Or maybe it's just ancient software running on older hardware that's starting to fall over after a couple years of lighter loads and a sudden increase in complexity and weirdness. Everything is breaking at the moment.
- Vecr 4y ago
  By "y'all qaeda" you mean the boojahideen, not actual Al-Qaeda?
  - scrumper 4y ago
    Yes exactly, the gravy seals.
    - kfkfldo 4y ago
      [flagged]
    - Ancapistani 4y ago
      Meal Team Six?
  - fuzzylightbulb 4y ago
    Ah yes, the Yee-Hawdists. Vanilla ISIS. Banana Republicans. Meal Team 6. Walmartyrs. Classic buffoonery. Until it's not.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  There's also the world's biggest viral pandemic that's still ongoing and currently in a post-holiday peak where many people are out sick...
  - scrumper 4y ago
    "sudden increase in complexity and weirdness"
whalesalad 4y ago
We’re being pen tested by every other country in the world constantly.
jaywalk 4y ago
Southwest's meltdown was definitely not an attack. Their crew scheduling software was so outdated that it required people to call in and speak to a human to report when they were out of position due to a cancelled flight. The sheer volume of cancellations resulted in this very manual system simply falling over, and so when the weather cleared up they actually had no idea where most of their crews were.
- gojomo 4y ago
  Sure, that's the publicly-reported story. Is it sufficient? Hard to tell from the outside. Just a tiny bit of blackmailer-sabotage or vandal mischief-making – the sort of thing often underreported for legitimate reasons! – could've been the margin between some mild embarassment & the total collapse we saw. (For example: tying up the call-in lines to turn a normal hold time of minutes into hours, or long busy signals.) Simple monocausal stories are for unsophisticated spectators.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    All you're doing is letting your imagination run wild because you don't want to believe the simplest (and most likely) explanation. This isn't helpful to anyone.
    - gojomo 4y ago
      It's a helpful exercise for naive young people who always believe the simple publicly-reported stories, and haven't yet had the life experience to know there's often more to the story, which only comes out years later (if ever), or via private conversations to deeply-knowledgeable personnel!
      - jaywalk 4y ago
        No, it's really not a helpful exercise. An actual helpful exercise is to determine when an official story doesn't make sense, and to understand that there is probably more to it. In this case, the official story make perfect sense. Doubting it is just creating fairy tales.
win32k 4y ago
Obviously not. Southwest issue isn't even close to having to do with FAA systems. Not everything is a cyber attack... most things are just accidental systems issues.
mardifoufs 4y ago
It's weird that americans always seem to have this sort of siege mentality. We already know the causes of the other outages, and they have nothing to do with the foreign interference boogeyman.
- gretch 4y ago
  Are you so sure you have 0 people of this type in [country you are from]? Are you sure you are not seeing selection bias because the majority of users on this site are Americans?
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    I think that it's still pretty unique to the US. I completely agree with your point in general, and I think that internet discussions are often centered around America, so there's a huge selection biais in online discourse. But I truly think that the "the empire is under siege"/national security discourse is much more prevalent in the US. Which makes sense considering it is the empire ;). We don't really have that where I'm from. Instead of a siege mentality, we have a prevalent inferiority complex hahaha.
- flandish 4y ago
  Why do you assume I am American? Or are you speaking generally? “We” don’t know the causes, only what was reported. I’ve worked on a lot of old systems needing to be updated, migrated, or sunset. For sure it’s 99% of the time due to management being lazy. I get that. And I know correlation/causation, but hey my orig comment was a simple curiosity. Sure, my nature distrusts what a corporation says because it’s always filtered through stockholder functions, but I still think “3 major airline issues in as many months” is kind of hilarious. Even if they seem to be in different facets. Does this happen often but only now is it reported to “us”? Or is this truly an odd and rare timing?
  - jjulius 4y ago
    >Sure, my nature distrusts what a corporation says because it’s always filtered through stockholder functions OK, but in Southwest's case, you had former and current employees from various positions within the company publicly coming out and lambasting Southwest for the failure to actually invest in upgrading their scheduling system that led to the outage. It wasn't just a corporation coming out and going, "Here's what we hope you believe happened," it was pissed off employees publicly fucked off that their years of complaints went unheard and now they were all paying the price for being ignored. >Or is this truly an odd and rare timing? It's just odd/rare. I would wager that your brain's rush to try and tie them together like this is just it's way of trying to make sense of something it normally doesn't see.
koofdoof 4y ago
Could just as easily be a bias in reporting given the interest in other flight related issues lately. Previously unremarkable outages like this can suddenly become newsworthy if other current events seem to give them context. Once an issue is proven to draw clicks headlines will go back to that well any chance they get.
kube-system 4y ago
I would think, of all forums on the internet, that this forum would realize how many heaping piles of fragile software the world is built on.

Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, three times is enemy action. It could be Russia, Iran, China, climate direct action groups (probably not y'all qaeda though). Or maybe it's just ancient software running on older hardware that's starting to fall over after a couple years of lighter loads and a sudden increase in complexity and weirdness. Everything is breaking at the moment.

Vecr 4y ago
By "y'all qaeda" you mean the boojahideen, not actual Al-Qaeda?
- scrumper 4y ago
  Yes exactly, the gravy seals.
  - kfkfldo 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - Ancapistani 4y ago
    Meal Team Six?
- fuzzylightbulb 4y ago
  Ah yes, the Yee-Hawdists. Vanilla ISIS. Banana Republicans. Meal Team 6. Walmartyrs. Classic buffoonery. Until it's not.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
There's also the world's biggest viral pandemic that's still ongoing and currently in a post-holiday peak where many people are out sick...
- scrumper 4y ago
  "sudden increase in complexity and weirdness"

whalesalad 4y ago

We’re being pen tested by every other country in the world constantly.

jaywalk 4y ago

Southwest's meltdown was definitely not an attack. Their crew scheduling software was so outdated that it required people to call in and speak to a human to report when they were out of position due to a cancelled flight. The sheer volume of cancellations resulted in this very manual system simply falling over, and so when the weather cleared up they actually had no idea where most of their crews were.

gojomo 4y ago
Sure, that's the publicly-reported story. Is it sufficient? Hard to tell from the outside. Just a tiny bit of blackmailer-sabotage or vandal mischief-making – the sort of thing often underreported for legitimate reasons! – could've been the margin between some mild embarassment & the total collapse we saw. (For example: tying up the call-in lines to turn a normal hold time of minutes into hours, or long busy signals.) Simple monocausal stories are for unsophisticated spectators.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  All you're doing is letting your imagination run wild because you don't want to believe the simplest (and most likely) explanation. This isn't helpful to anyone.
  - gojomo 4y ago
    It's a helpful exercise for naive young people who always believe the simple publicly-reported stories, and haven't yet had the life experience to know there's often more to the story, which only comes out years later (if ever), or via private conversations to deeply-knowledgeable personnel!
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      No, it's really not a helpful exercise. An actual helpful exercise is to determine when an official story doesn't make sense, and to understand that there is probably more to it. In this case, the official story make perfect sense. Doubting it is just creating fairy tales.

win32k 4y ago

Obviously not. Southwest issue isn't even close to having to do with FAA systems. Not everything is a cyber attack... most things are just accidental systems issues.

mardifoufs 4y ago

It's weird that americans always seem to have this sort of siege mentality. We already know the causes of the other outages, and they have nothing to do with the foreign interference boogeyman.

gretch 4y ago
Are you so sure you have 0 people of this type in [country you are from]? Are you sure you are not seeing selection bias because the majority of users on this site are Americans?
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  I think that it's still pretty unique to the US. I completely agree with your point in general, and I think that internet discussions are often centered around America, so there's a huge selection biais in online discourse. But I truly think that the "the empire is under siege"/national security discourse is much more prevalent in the US. Which makes sense considering it is the empire ;). We don't really have that where I'm from. Instead of a siege mentality, we have a prevalent inferiority complex hahaha.
flandish 4y ago
Why do you assume I am American? Or are you speaking generally? “We” don’t know the causes, only what was reported. I’ve worked on a lot of old systems needing to be updated, migrated, or sunset. For sure it’s 99% of the time due to management being lazy. I get that. And I know correlation/causation, but hey my orig comment was a simple curiosity. Sure, my nature distrusts what a corporation says because it’s always filtered through stockholder functions, but I still think “3 major airline issues in as many months” is kind of hilarious. Even if they seem to be in different facets. Does this happen often but only now is it reported to “us”? Or is this truly an odd and rare timing?
- jjulius 4y ago
  >Sure, my nature distrusts what a corporation says because it’s always filtered through stockholder functions OK, but in Southwest's case, you had former and current employees from various positions within the company publicly coming out and lambasting Southwest for the failure to actually invest in upgrading their scheduling system that led to the outage. It wasn't just a corporation coming out and going, "Here's what we hope you believe happened," it was pissed off employees publicly fucked off that their years of complaints went unheard and now they were all paying the price for being ignored. >Or is this truly an odd and rare timing? It's just odd/rare. I would wager that your brain's rush to try and tie them together like this is just it's way of trying to make sense of something it normally doesn't see.

koofdoof 4y ago

Could just as easily be a bias in reporting given the interest in other flight related issues lately. Previously unremarkable outages like this can suddenly become newsworthy if other current events seem to give them context. Once an issue is proven to draw clicks headlines will go back to that well any chance they get.

kube-system 4y ago

I would think, of all forums on the internet, that this forum would realize how many heaping piles of fragile software the world is built on.