America's Defenseless Skies; Ground of thousands of planes and disruptions in critical systems, has the American infrastructure been cyber-attacked?
Summary: America is going through challenging times and the disruption in the Air Force, the train ticket sales system and the communications of the meteorological organization show the unusual state of the country's infrastructure. On Friday, November 13, a disruption in the communication and telecommunications network of the air traffic control centers led to the grounding of planes and widespread chaos at the airports.
This crisis began with a disruption in the radar and communication systems of flight control centers, and America's Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide grounding of outgoing flights to prevent accidents. In this incident, nearly 10,000 flights were canceled and more than 15,000 were delayed and canceled. Hundreds of thousands of passengers were stranded and the airlines faced enormous financial losses.
The estimates show the financial loss of the airlines between 122 and 387 million dollars. Delta and American Airlines canceled more than 2,200 flights each, United 1,800 and Southwest nearly 1,400. In addition to economic losses, the possibility of a cyber attack on aviation infrastructure was also raised; However, the US authorities have not yet confirmed this.
At the same time as the aviation was disrupted, the ticketing system of the Amtrak train and the communications of the National Weather Service were also disrupted. Also, Uber announced the theft of personal information and driver's license of thousands of drivers following a cyber attack on one of the technology service providers. The coincidence of these events has increased speculation about the possibility of massive cyber attacks.
In addition to the possibility of digital sabotage, American officials admitted that the navigation equipment and infrastructure are worn out. Sean Duffy called for an allocation of $50 billion to modernize the air traffic control network. Meanwhile, some experts have highlighted the cyber capability of countries like Iran to target critical US infrastructure. Despite uncertainty about the source of the disruptions, the incidents exposed the vulnerability of America's infrastructure.
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