Was the FFA system failure caused by a cyberattack?
A system failure led the Federal Aviation Administration to ground all flights in the US, what caused the issues? Was it a cyberattack?
Earlier this morning, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced that the team at the Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA) had restored the Notice to Air Missions system that had seen a severe breakdown overnight.
What is the Notice to Air Missions system?
The system is designed to inform pilots of possible threats to the saftey of the aircraft during flight.
The outage led to delays across the country, with very few flights getting the okay for takeoff before 9 a.m ET. The FAA has said that the safety system is back up and running and that flights are no longer grounded.
FAA has determined that the safety system affected by the overnight outage is fully restored, and the nationwide ground stop will be lifted effective immediately. I have directed an after-action process to determine root causes and recommend next steps.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) January 11, 2023
This outage comes after holiday travelers, mostly those who had booked with Southwest Airlines, saw their itineraries upended after system breakdowns led to a massive wave of cancellations across the country.
What caused the outage?
The cause has yet to be determined, but the FAA reported that an investigation had been opened.
One cause that has not been ruled out is a cyber attack, but leaders have so far underplayed the likelihood that an intentional intrusion of this nature led to the taking down of the system. Just after the announcement of the system failure was released, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took to Twitter to say that so far, there is no evidence that a cyber attack was responsible for the failure.
The President has been briefed by the Secretary of Transportation this morning on the FAA system outage. There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes. The FAA will provide regular updates.
— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) January 11, 2023
Very few details of what may have caused the crash have been released, but the FFA has said that they will provide updates as the investigation progresses.