Customs Computers Down At Airports Nationwide

[think]

Source: Huffington Post

Travelers at Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Dallas-Forth Worth, Charlotte and Baltimore airports reported technical problems checking in to customs on Wednesday evening.

Representatives from several major airports said it appeared to be a "national outage," and referred HuffPost to Customs and Border Protection, which has not yet responded to calls or emails.

According to CNBC, the malfunction appears to stem from terror watch lists.



Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/customs-check-in-down-across-major-airports-nationwide_561ef1a0e4b0c5a1ce6200b5

[RGinNJ]

1. Scary

[Renew Deal]

2. Who did it and why?

[leveymg]

3. Something strange is going on.

Those systems are doubly redundant. The local hard drives contain the last Visa Viper watch lists which are updated daily. If the central system is down each Port of Entry can still operate independently with the most recent list.

[Major Nikon]

8. It's not that strange

Air traffic control and airline reservation computer systems sometimes fail even though they have all sorts of redundancies. There's still single points of failure in just about any system and software problems can also plague redundant systems.

[leveymg]

19. No, this is different from ATC and reservations that must operate in real time.

Most of the names on the watch list have been there for years. It doesn't make sense that there should be long noticable delays in processing if the DHS central computer is temporarily down. It may be that they are double-checking biometrics manually, something that isn't normally done. There's another explanation for this than computer problems.

[GoneFishin]

4. I guess anything bad that happens we can expect to be blamed on some foreigner, regardless

of who really does it.

[Demeter]

5. I'm thinking Windows 10

Microsoft is a leader in terrorism

[GoneFishin]

6. Sure, they should be embarrassed to write such bloated sloppy code as to hog 10 Gb on disk, but

I would not call them terrorists.

[bonniebgood]

16. im with you. i believe its windows 10. After using it for a month, windows 10

auto 'configured' windows. when it finished, i could not gain access to my computer again. after going thru 8 hours on my cell phone with them, im still dont have access to my computer. DO NOT DOWNLOAD WINDOWS 10! NOTHING IS FREE PERIOD. If i have to buy anything other than Mac/, it wont be anything above windows 7. Strange my reliable firefox went out 3 hours ago.

[Kelvin Mace]

17. We are talking about goverment computers

They are probably running Windows 3.1

[csziggy]

7. Just finished watching NOVA - "Cyberwar Threat" about hacking potential

For nearly every computer in the world including critical infrastructure computers. Interesting timing on that!

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. Hackers Can Silently Control Siri From 16 Feet Away

A pair of researchers at ANSSI, a French government agency devoted to information security, have shown that they can use radio waves to silently trigger voice commands on any Android phone or iPhone that has Google Now or Siri enabled, if it also has a pair of headphones with a microphone plugged into its jack. Their clever hack uses those headphones’ cord as an antenna, exploiting its wire to convert surreptitious electromagnetic waves into electrical signals that appear to the phone’s operating system to be audio coming from the user’s microphone. Without speaking a word, a hacker could use that radio attack to tell Siri or Google Now to make calls and send texts, dial the hacker’s number to turn the phone into an eavesdropping device, send the phone’s browser to a malware site, or send spam and phishing messages via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-radio-trick-silently-hacks-siri-from-16-feet-away/

[csziggy]

11. On the show they demonstrated controlling a car's brakes

Through the onboard computer and I thought about that reporter whose car accelerated into a pole, killing him.

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. You, me, and a LOT of other people

It has been discussed onlilne.

Makes all the computerized airplane controls look a bit scary, doesn't it?

[wildbilln864]

18. Michael Hastings n/t

[csziggy]

20. Thanks - I couldn't remember his name n/t

[Major Nikon]

10. My last experience with US Customs was one big clusterfuck

I flew my plane into Canada and all I had to do was call CanPass before departing. Once in Canada I simply called them when I was on the ground, they took down some information, and said, "Welcome to Canada". They didn't even come to the plane to inspect it.

With US Customs I had to call. I had to fill out a manifest on eAPIS that demanded all sorts of information that took hours to populate for both coming and going. I had to buy a sticker for the airplane proving I paid my yearly entrance fee, and I had to file an international flight plan both coming and going. Even after all this, Customs claimed they weren't notified and when they inspected the plane a supervisor came over and read us the riot act for not notifying them even though we notified them we were coming in 3 different ways. The lesson learned was always get the name of the person you spoke to on the phone. They also confiscated our beef jerky because the bag wasn't labeled (it was homemade), but let us keep our dried fruit even though the bag said, "Made in Canada" on it. We laughed afterwards that US Customs only manages to intercept 5% of the drugs coming across the border, but they get all the beef jerky.

[mia]

14. My last impression of US Customs

was when they boarded a boat returning from Bimini and mistook a contraceptive foam applicator for a bong.

[mia]

12. My impressions of government hiring practices is that nepotism rules.

I can imagine that the office of "Customs and Border Protection" does not have the best minds at work on this issue.

[shireen]

15. A few days ago, it was Southwest ...

due to a computer glitch. Now it's customs. I guess i'm feeling a little extra paranoid tonight after watching Nova on PBS about cyber terrorism.