United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#31

Post by dlgeek » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:35 PM UTC

scrumper wrote: post #6

That's twice in a short time now - 'coincidence' on Ian Fleming's scale. A third time is enemy action. Airlines do seem like a pretty juicy target for cyber war operations - you can cause a gigantic amount of disruption with a successful attack on a single system.

Or, you know, the load is increasing over time, and the system is failing to scale to it, and so will fail more and more frequently as the load continues to increase?

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#32

Post by grhmc » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:35 PM UTC

raus22 wrote: post #13

Off-topic: Please use ISO 8601 format(YYYY-MM-DD) for dates in titles. The US date format hurts my poor logical soul. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

ISO8601? Easy. 2015-W283. Or maybe (?) 2015188. ISO8601 will hurt your logical soul, don't stare too deeply into its eyes.

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#33

Post by mnw21cam » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:36 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #7

scrumper wrote: post #6

That's twice in a short time now - 'coincidence' on Ian Fleming's scale. A third time is enemy action. Airlines do seem like a pretty juicy target for cyber war operations - you can cause a gigantic amount of disruption with a successful attack on a single system.

That seems like quite a leap given how often complex computer systems fail without any malicious act.

Indeed. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#34

Post by caminante » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:36 PM UTC

jonawesomegreen wrote: post #15

I bet this is an issue with an old mainframe used somewhere in the booking system, something that has worked well but is difficult to fix when things go wrong. I think there is / will be a lot of money to be made trying to solve the problem of software security and reliability. This is obviously an extremely difficult problem, however the number of ancient systems that we currently have interconnected I think more la…

I submit there's more money to be [saved] from not replacing old systems.

Case in point, take this HackerNews fan favorite[1] about a school district using an "ancient system" and avoiding $M's in incremental costs.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9705830

edit: As mentioned in [1], I assume that at least someone is aware of the cost-benefit of potential projects; in turn, I assume that someone would've pulled the trigger if the $'s make sense.

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#35

Post by notNow » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

interdrift wrote: post #16

raus22 wrote: post #13

Off-topic: Please use ISO 8601 format(YYYY-MM-DD) for dates in titles. The US date format hurts my poor logical soul. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

It's still month 7 so it's hard to be confused. PS. From Europe.

But a month from now, some people will be confused for sure. So, it's more future-proof to settle for ISO or alphanumeric format to avoid confusion and miscommunication.

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#36

Post by Sukotto » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

What does "all airports" mean? Global or just US domestic?

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#37

Post by snarfy » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

raus22 wrote: post #13

Off-topic: Please use ISO 8601 format(YYYY-MM-DD) for dates in titles. The US date format hurts my poor logical soul. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

There's little endian, big endian, and the US date format, which I like to call middle endian.

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#38

Post by kieranelby » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:39 PM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #4

Official status page: http://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/jsp/summary_sys.jsp Currently says: ATCSCC ADVZY 027 DCC 07/08/15 UAL GROUND STOP REVISION DESTINATION AIRPORT: ALL AIRPORTS FACILITIES INCLUDED: ALL FACILITIES GROUND STOP PERIOD: 08/1200Z - 08/1315Z REASON: USER REQUEST AUTOMATION ISSUES

Good to see the Sun Microsystems favicon on the FAA status page - not seen one of those for a while!

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#39

Post by coldcode » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

imroot wrote: post #26

aaronkrolik wrote: post #23

Is anyone familiar with the UA tech stack? I'd be curious to see what they're running.

They're running SHARES internally; most everything else is specific applications with hooks into shares for data processing and return.

Lol HP system. I used to work for SABRE, its far more dependable despite its antiquity. HP is a marginal player in this market which is dominated by SABRE and Amadeus.

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#40

Post by ianhawes » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

chinathrow wrote: post #10

Nice reminder about a "glitch" happening in one of the datacenters use at the airline I used to work. Went like this: Guy who shows around the new datacenter/ops guy demonstrated how the emergency power off works by lifting the protection plate. Protection plate unhinges suddenly and droppes onto emergency power off button. Hilarity ensues.

I remember one of the LiveJournal outages (IIRC) was caused by a dude in the datacenter thinking that the emergency power off button opened one of the doors.