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Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

nco.ncep.noaa.gov

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Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#61

Post by Vecr »

scrumper wrote: post #54
flandish wrote: post #47

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

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.

By "y'all qaeda" you mean the boojahideen, not actual Al-Qaeda?

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#62

Post by acdha »

trollied wrote: post #6

Has anything happened regarding IT staffing at the FAA recently? There was the NOTAM outage last week [1], and now this! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34337158

The NOTAM system was apparently running on old SPARC hardware so I’d easily believe that they haven’t been given enough budget to hire engineers and are basically keeping the lights on. One peril of the government funding model is that it’s effective at shoveling money to contracting companies but not having skilled oversight, so you tend to see lots of big projects which founder under their own weight.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#64

Post by scrumper »

Vecr wrote: post #61
scrumper wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By "y'all qaeda" you mean the boojahideen, not actual Al-Qaeda?

Yes exactly, the gravy seals.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#65

Post by TehCorwiz »

SamPatt wrote: post #48
shmatt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the conservative playbook. Cut funding until the entity can't run properly, then yell JEEZ GUYS YOU REALLY SUCK wHY DON'T WE SHUT YOU DOWN The previous president significantly cut the FAA's budget, maybe we're just seeing now how that affects us in the long term

I'm not a conversative. Presidents don't pass budgets. FAA funding has increased, not decreased. I can criticize my government all I want. You're turning this into a political party thing when it's a government service failure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/whi...

Relevant quote:

"President Trump’s support for a plan to lop more than 30,000 Federal Aviation Administration workers from the federal payroll gives fresh momentum to an effort that stalled in Congress last year.

The proposal is included in Trump’s 2018 budget, which would cut funding for the Transportation Department by 13 percent."

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#66

Post by jaywalk »

flandish wrote: post #47

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

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.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#67

Post by envyac »

trollied wrote: post #6

Has anything happened regarding IT staffing at the FAA recently? There was the NOTAM outage last week [1], and now this! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34337158

You mean besides the last three years of reduced on-site staffing, and employee travel to support maintenance and modernization? No.

$5 says this is the XKCD for this. Corrupted DB file was the culprit, as announced by the FAA. It's a system that relies on user inputs, often manual, and it's all being put into a database. My bet is a user decided to put in a bunch of "fun characters" to make their input easier to read. You can't account for and sanitize all levels of stupidity on user inputs.

https://xkcd.com/327/

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#70

Post by qbasic_forever »

scrumper wrote: post #54
flandish wrote: post #47

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

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.

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...
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