02.08.09
Windows Problems Take Down Airplanes, JFK Airport, Houston Municipal Courts
Serenity Security now!
IT wasn’t so long ago that NASA got plagued with Windows viruses that had infected its PCs in space. As embarrassing and dangerous as that was, it neither led to any crashes nor forced an emergency return to planet Earth. A few days ago we wrote about the French military becoming a victim of Windows viruses and French airplanes have just been downed by these severe issues. The news has just appeared in English [hat tip: Tony Manco].
Planes grounded by ‘Microsoft virus’
[...]
[T]his morning I happened upon peculiar information while accidentally scanning the French paper Liberation.
JFK too has just been sort of downed by a Windows failure and here is pictorial evidence.
So I was happy to see that they wanted everyone to truly experience life with Windows with one of the huge screens nicely displaying an exception. (grin)
Over in Houston, the court system has been downed by Windows viruses.
Houston shut down part of its municipal court operations Friday, cancelling hearings and suspending arrests for minor offenses after a computer virus infected hundreds of its machines. City officials said they expected the problems to extend at least through Monday.
Court offices will remain open to allow people to pay tickets and fines, but the dockets will have to be reset, a move that will affect thousands of cases, city officials said.
It was unclear Friday how the virus got into the system, but officials promised a thorough investigation. They could not say when they hoped to have the virus removed from the city network.
Last but not least, the abusive relationship between DNS and Windows botnets sure seems to be ‘flourishing’.
With an estimated 10 million PCs infected by the stealthy worm known as Conficker, it’s a good bet that plenty of administrators are blissfully unaware that their networks are playing host to the pest. Now, a free service called OpenDNS is offering a new feature designed to alert administrators to the damage and help them contain it.
Why is this needed in the first place? Because people's lives are now being compromised by Windows' failures? █
Needs Sunlight said,
February 9, 2009 at 3:19 am
Recall too that in 2004 already use of Windows in place of mission-critical software caused all air traffic for the world’s 7th largest economy to *cease* for 5 hours. Bush’s family friend, bin Laden, can’t even dream of achieving that much damage.
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=2275
Those responsible for allowing MS products to be deployed in mission critical environments need to be taken into custody and dealt with so that they pay for their crimes.