No Signs of Hacking in FAA Ground Stop as FBI Reportedly Probes Software Update
US officials found no evidence of hacking in the FAA's nationwide ground stop on November 13, with the FBI reportedly investigating a software update as the potential cause.
The FAA issued a ground stop on November 13 after a communications problem affected its air route traffic control centers. The order was lifted at 8:15 pm ET, more than four hours later, after disrupting thousands of flights. While departures have resumed, officials expect delays to continue for several days.
Investigation Findings
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed the incident did not appear to be the result of a cyberattack, describing the failure as mechanical. "There's no chatter, we haven't seen any footprints," Mullin stated, though he stopped short of completely ruling out the possibility.
However, we're still looking, so we're not going to rule that out.
System Overload
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed legacy equipment for the outage, noting that switches and routers in the FAA's network were flooded with data, causing inconsistent information that prompted the agency to shut the system down. Mullin suggested the FAA had been applying patches and installing new equipment, which "was overwhelming the older system." CBS News reported the outage followed an update to the private communications network operated by L3Harris that rebooted and then crashed.
Officials confirmed the incident had no connection to the Microsoft outage earlier in the week and that the FAA's recently deployed AI systems played no role. No official root cause has been announced, though the previous nationwide ground stop in January 2023 was also found not to involve a cyberattack.
Related
