It wasn't very hard because all those people were running with admin accounts when they inserted the CDs in question.
One would hope that on critical Boeing ATE machines (1) the day-to-day operations are not done with an admin account! and (2) autorun is disabled anyway.
The problem with Windoze users running with their admin accounts 100% of the time was bad enough that Microsoft went totally overboard with UAC in Windows Vista, largely creating a self-defeating "solution."
I don't want to prolong this pissing contest, but the original scenario was a mechanic reloading windows, not a rootkit. Apples and oranges. You've been able to tell the bios to only boot from the harddrive and you've been able to password protect the bios for about the last 20 years. I don't believe that your typical mechanic could have reinstalled windows had these simple precautions been taken.
Nobody snipped-for-privacy@nowhere.com posted to sci.electronics.design:
Spot on.
snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com posted to sci.electronics.design:
No, but the Carrier could engage it remotely for landings.
I am not sure, even then mostly only for Navy aircraft.
On a sunny day (Thu, 08 Nov 2007 19:29:44 -0800) it happened JosephKK wrote in :
I am not sure. the A380 can carry say 500 people. A wrong landing can potentially kill all 500, and inflict grave economical damage if those jobs are vacant all of the sudden. People DO make mistakes, recently some planed broke up on landing due to 'pilot error' (or too short a runway or whatever). Bad weather, windshear, landing to near to the runway end, aqua-planing, you name it. There is a psychological issue: Will people trust a 100% robotic flight? Most of these planes are already 100% controllable, and with multiple redundancy too. Even the shuttle lands auto IIRC. And I forgot drunk pilots.
853 in full economy configuration. Even the older and smaller 747-400 can carry over 550 in a 2-class configuration.
damage
name it.
redundancy too.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it\'s the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
damage
name it.
redundancy too.
Modern aircraft already land on autopilot; that part's easy.
The hard part is having the autopilot autonomously take "strategic" decisions (i.e. adjusting the flight plan).
Bear in mind that accidents get a lot more coverage than close shaves. The accidents that could have been prevented by eliminating specific pilot errors need to be balanced against the accidents which were prevented by manual intervention.
On a sunny day (Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:46:09 +0000) it happened Nobody wrote in :
damage
name it.
redundancy too.
Sure. Will auto-pilot forget to put the gear down ;-)? Sure the whole system will have to be adapted, some way to check for runway obstackles too. Recently there was this DARPA contest for autonomous cars in city traffic like circumstances, some cars actually made it. I just somehow messed up a 1GB card, because 'Oh I think it will not write to the partition if I exchange it with an other one while it is mounted'. Now what is it? Blackout? Too much cofee? The storm ? (bad here)? If you were to ask me I would say 'do not do that'. There also was this pilot who switched off the engines after take off, he perhaps thought he was 'there'. Not to mention that Islamic guy who went into a nose dive to kill everybody.
[snip]
The original branch of this thread (which I started) mentioned a mechanic who bypassed Windows security to install his own wallpaper and (repeated) failed attempts by various IT personnel to prevent such an action. There was nothing mentioned about his reloading Windows. In fact, I don't believe that this was how he accomplished the task.
Yes, not running as administrator can provide some security. But this only works to prevent accidental system damage. If a user is motivated to make system changes and has the ability to acquire admin privileges, all bets are off. From what I've seen (I don't maintain any Windows systems myself so I don't know what the trick is), becoming admin on a Windows system is a trivial task.
-- Paul Hovnanian paul@hovnanian.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Procrastinators: The leaders for tomorrow.
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