A failure in the US aviation system exposed the vulnerability of supercomputer systems.
A major aviation incident has once again shown the vulnerability of large automated information structures. All airline flights in the United States were suspended for more than four hours due to a launch system failure.
According to official information, the malfunction happened as a result of changing equipment in one of the control rooms. The new equipment started sending a lot of requests to the network, overloading the system.
One centralized system proved too vulnerable. As a result of the incident, over 6,100 flights were canceled, another 7,400 were delayed or will be delayed, and the consequences of the malfunction will continue to be felt for some time, but it will be necessary to restore the entire system.
It is interesting that the failure occurred against the background of a nationwide update of the launch system. The US Congress allocated 30 billion dollars for these purposes; After the failure, this amount was requested to be increased to 50 billion dollars.
It is worth emphasizing that the air traffic control system is a highly protected structure, protected from external influences. In other systems that cannot be so reliably protected (such as state systems for processing personal data of citizens), the likelihood of failures, including due to attacks, is significantly higher, and the consequences may be even more serious.
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