Windows worm crashes nuclear plant

[mdlbear]

According to this article, the Slammer worm crashed a safety monitoring system in an Ohio nuclear power plant last January. The plant was, fortunately, offline. This leaves one to wonder whether the recent Blaster worm had anything to do with last week's massive power outage. It also leaves one to wonder what in blazes they were thinking when they decided to base the monitoring system on Windows.

According to the article,

The Slammer worm entered the Davis-Besse plant through a circuitous route. It began by penetrating the unsecured network of an unnamed Davis-Besse contractor, then squirmed through a T1 line bridging that network and Davis-Besse's corporate network. The T1 line, investigators later found, was one of multiple ingresses into Davis-Besse's business network that completely bypassed the plant's firewall, which was programmed to block the port Slammer used to spread.

Comments

[mithriltabby]

In my experience, the answer to the “what were they thinking?” questions like that is generally, “They weren’t.”

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Windows has no business being used in life safety applications.

[eleccham.livejournal.com]

I think that cars count...

[mdlbear]

I seem to recall a number of recent stories about Windows-equipped cars having to be rebooted in order to get back on the road. In one case, a government official in some South American country was trapped in his limosine for several hours.

I also note that all of the applications of Windows in cars are in dashboard applications, not the hard realtime that's really critical.

[eleccham.livejournal.com]

I have four words in response to Windows-equipped cars:

Blue Windshield Of Death.