Failure of UK air traffic control computer systems

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August 26, 2023

For further details and discussion, see the talk page. (To see what is hot, see recent changes)

Sources

NATS said that the failure was the result of a “technical issue” but has given no detail of its root cause. A UK intelligence source who formerly worked at GCHQ told i it was “a good working assumption” that the issues stemmed from a hack.
“Initial investigations into the problem show it relates to some of the flight data we received. Our systems, both primary and the back-ups, responded by suspending automatic processing to ensure that no incorrect safety-related information could be presented to an air traffic controller or impact the rest of the air traffic system. There are no indications that this was a cyber-attack.
Several sources say the issue may have been caused when a French airline filed a dodgy flight plan that made no digital sense. Instead of the error being rejected, it prompted a shutdown of the entire Nats system – raising questions over how one clerical error could cause such mayhem.
Nats, which controls UK airspace, said “an unusual piece of data” had caused the unprecedented system failure on Monday,...Walsh said it was a “staggering” explanation. He told the BBC: “If that is true, it demonstrates a considerable weakness.”
You'd might be thinking the system and its operators would reject malformed or incorrect input, and continue on as normal without drama. The Register understands that invalid flight plan messages submitted to the Flight Plan Processing System are automatically detected and collect in the invalid queue. At this point, we understand, air traffic control staff have responsibility for processing the invalid entries by manually correcting them in a first come, first served basis, suggesting that such issues are not uncommon. It is conceivable that the problems seen on Monday may stem from human error when attempting to correct an invalid flight plan message. We asked NATS if this might be the case, but we did not receive an answer.
Despite the reassurances, the whole incident has led IT experts to question why the system can be brought down simply by badly formatted information, suggesting that it runs on ageing technology

Recent change in UK Govt Policy

Government documents, including the 2021 integrated review of the UK’s security, defence and foreign policy, have been edited to replace the phrase "hostile states" with "hostile actors". A source said the Foreign Office advised officials to stop using the term due to advice that it was legally ambiguous, with "hostile actors” giving the Government better “legal grounding”. A Government spokesman said: “The integrated review refresh uses a range of terms to describe the activities of state and non-state actors, including ‘state threats’. "This terminology is agreed across government and is widely used by our allies.
While the initial motivation behind this change was to foster better diplomatic ties with China, the implication extends to Russia, North Korea, and Iran as well.