As the next WIWT News posting was in queue and ready to be posted early Friday morning, nearly identical real-world news headlines began hitting the internet just after 01:00am.

BBC NEWS

Planes grounded as mass worldwide IT outage hits airlines, media … – BBC

Today Planes grounded asmass worldwide IT outage hits airlines, media and banks Summary IT outages are hitting airlines, banks and media across the world, with many flights grounded

WIWT NEWS

(The “Fake” news outlet developed to support the training exercise, T-REX)

FCC Grounds Airlines Due to Navigational Systems Failures in Most Major Airlines

Multiple industries and systems are affected worldwide.  This does NOT appear to be a malicious cyber attack, but rather a bad Microsoft product update in their security software product, ‘Crowdstrike’ last night.

There is a patch that is being worked on, and there is already a system workaround to get local systems and servers operational until the patch can be finished.

The fix:

  1.  Boot Windows in Safe Mode
  2. Navigate to c:\windows\system32\drivers\crowdstrikedir
  3. Locate the file matching “c-0pppp291*.sys* and delete it
  4. Boot the device normally

This was confirmed by an AmRRON member who works in the medical field  to have worked to get their systems and servers working again.

The catch is that it apparently requires physical access to each machine.  In the world of “remote” IT support, this is leading to long delays in getting everything back up and running.

The Question of T-REX

Some have asked, since this is so eerily close to the cyber attack component of T-REX, if we should consider cancelling the exercise.

T-REX 2024 will continue, but with some points of clarification and emphasis, and slight changes that won’t affect the exercise.

  1.  We will not be posting any further WIWT News stories.  There is enough there to give the participants sufficient information to determine the cause of the simulated grid down emergency.
  2. It is vitally important that ALL T-REX related radio traffic be CLEARLY MARKED “TRAINING EXERCISE” or “ONLY A TRAINING EXERCISE”
  3. Maintain real-world situational awareness and keep internet-based communications operational to monitor the situation.  There are unconfirmed reports that in some places there are runs on ATMs and (to a lesser degree) banks out of fear that people will not be able to have access to their money.

The perception and fear, as well as other yet unknown affects, could lead to a cascading effect on a social or technical level.

NON I.T. RELATED CHALLENGES

On another note, it has come to our attention that a RTTY (RadioTeletype) “contest” was scheduled for this weekend.  This will undoubtedly lead to a very disruptive operating environment on the HF bands, and we expect a great deal of interference.

Do the best you can, and expect stations sending traffic to drop down to other slower modes such as MFSK16, THOR, or Olivia 4/500 or Olivia 4/250

Post Views: 832