RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Sunday 19 February 2023 Volume 33 : Issue 62

ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, founder and still moderator

***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/33.62>
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Contents:
BBC News: Lufthansa tech failure leaves planes grounded (BBC)
Amazing Southwest Air story (SW pilot via Paul Saffo)
Tesla admits Full Self-Driving beta may cause crashes, recalls 363,000
vehicles (Engadget)
Tesla Cofounder Calls Autopilot, FSD Software Risky 'Crap'
(Business Insider)
Bionic_nose may help people experiencing smell loss, researchers say
(WashPost)
Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first
(The Verge)
Woman Died Trapped in Burning SUV After Vehicle Malfunctiono (Newsweek)
Hyundai, Kia Cars Targeted In Fairfax County With Rise Of TikTok Trend
(Kingstowne VA Patch)
Mary Queen of Scots secret letters decoded (The Register)
The Army Officer Email Chain that Caused Pandemonium (Military.com)
How CISA plans to get tech firms to bake security into their products
(WashPost)
Digital pound likely this decade, Treasury says (BBC)
SMS-Based Multi-Factor Authentication: What Could Go Wrong? Plenty (PCMag)
Two women, one Social Security number, and a mighty big mess (NBC News)
Here's how Musk could have dealt with SMS 2FA responsibly (Lauren Weinstein)
JPMorgan Paid $175 Million for a Business It Now Says Was a Scam (NYTimes)
The People Onscreen Are Fake. The Disinformation Is Real. (NYT)
Peabody EDI Office responds to MSU shooting with email written using ChatGPT
(The Vanderbilt Hustler)
ChatGPT-Written Malware (Bruce Schneier)
These 26 words 'created the Internet.' Now the Supreme Court may be coming
for them (CNN)
Re: How Smart Are the Robots Getting? (David Parnas, Amos Shapir)
Why a Conversation With Bing's Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled
(Kevin Roose)
Bing chatbot says it feels 'violated and exposed' after attack (BBC)
Trying Microsoft's new AI chatbot search engine, some answers are uh-ohs
(WashPost)
Re: ChatGPT on a blog: huMansplaining on parade (Wol)
Are chatbots coming for your job? (Chris Stokel-Walker)
Re: rm -rf (Glen Story)
Re: Dreams of a Future in Big Tech Dim for Computer Science Students
(dmitri maziuk)
Re: Historic Arctic outbreak crushes records in New England (Wol)
Re: The Cloud (Jay R. Ashworth)
Space Rogue: How the Hackers Known As L0pht Changed the World
(Review by Richard Thieme)
Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

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Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2023 18:19:51 -0000
From: Paul Cornish <paul.a.cornish@googlemail.com>
Subject: BBC News: Lufthansa tech failure leaves planes grounded (BBC)

200 Lufthansa flights grounded at Frankfurt airport after engineering
works on a nearby railway line mistakenly cut a bundle of cables, taking
down the airlines
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64652835

I wonder if this could be a case of a gradual increase in the criticality of
infrastructure as its use gets closer and closer to the minute-by-minute
operations of the airline? I've seen it happen in other industries where
tools to *advise* operators as demand rises they become increasingly
critical to continuing safe operation. However, all the safety/reliability
analyses may not get updated from the original *advisory* tool use case.

[Also noted by Jan Wolitzky:
Severed Cable Forces Lufthansa to Cancel Its Flights, NYTimes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/business/lufthansa-it-problem-cancelled-flights.html
Gabe Goldberg noted
[... the airline said all of its systems were now back up.
https://sports.yahoo.com/lufthansa-tech-failure-leaves-planes-145450227.html
PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2022 18:22:22 -0800
From: "Paul Saffo" <paul@saffo.com>
Subject: Amazing Southwest Air story

This remarkable tale from a Southwest pilot:

My friend's husband is a pilot with Southwest. He just posted this an hour
ago. I'm not including his name or the photos he shared of packed SWA
employee rooms at the airports over the past couple of days (in case his
post comes back to bite him with the company -- even though he's stating
facts.) He also posted a screenshot of a fellow pilot on hold with SWA
Scheduling for over 22 hours. Anyway, here's some insight for those
wondering if this massive round of SWA cancelations is really all due to
weather and staffing issues: ``I don't know what to say. Southwest Airlines
has imploded. Their antiquated software system has completely fried. Planes
are parked. Crews are stranded in the airports with the passengers,
volunteering to take the passengers in the parked planes but the software
won't accept it. Phone lines are overwhelmed for both passenger and crews. I
personally spent over two hours trying to get ahold of anyone in the company
last night after midnight. A Captain and I did manage to get the one flight
put together on Christmas night and got people home. Kudos to the ops agent
and dispatcher for making it happen. We had to manually input a lot of the
data and it took over an hour to coordinate with dispatch going back and
forth running numbers.

``We spent hours trying to get the company to answer and get us a hotel when
we landed as they're all sold out. We were only put in a call que for hours
before hanging up. I found one hotel with 4 rooms and we bought our own
rooms at 2:30am. I even paid for a Flight Attendants room. We literally have
crews sleeping on the airport floors all over the country with nowhere to
go. Crews have been calling to fly anyone, anywhere, but the company says
the system needs a reset. They have effectively shut down the operations for
the rest of year, running 1/3 of the flights so that they can let the
computer find and locate the crews and aircraft. Gate agents are in
tears. They've been yelled at, cussed at, slapped and spit on. Flight
attendants have been taking a beating. The frontline employees have had
little support or communication. Terminals are standing room only with
people having been there for days. Pilot lounges are packed with pilots
ready to fly and nowhere to go. Embarrassing is an understatement. I'm
going on my second of three days off, still stuck on the east coast and
still expected to show up in the morning with no schedule. And I'm willing
to fly all day if needed. Because that's nothing compared to the passengers
needing meds in bags that are lost and mothers traveling with kids, having
been stuck for the same amount of days in the terminal. In 24 years, I've
never seen anything like this. Heads need to roll! Rumors on media are
floating that there is a lack of crews and pilots are staging sick calls.
Absolutely not true at all. This is a computer system meltdown. Thousands of
crew members are sitting in hotels and airports with nowhere to go. This
airline has failed miserably.''

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2023 20:12:09 -0500
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: Tesla admits Full Self-Driving beta may cause crashes, recalls
363,000 vehicles (Engadget)

Who could have possibly seen this coming?

Tesla will release an OTA update, free of charge to its customers to rectify
the issue, Reuters reports. This recall follows a litany of similar
corrective actions taken throughout 2022 for everything from funky tail
lights to overheating infotainment systems to noisy seat belt chimes -- even
that gimmick Cyberquad for Kids got the regulatory hook.

https://www.engadget.com/tesla-recalls-over-360000-vehicles-for-full-self-driving-crash-risk-180110819.html

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2023 15:03:44 -0500
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: Tesla Cofounder Calls Autopilot, FSD Software Risky 'Crap'
(Business Insider)

Tesla cofounder Martin Eberhard said he's "not a big fan" of autonomous
cars. He said self-driving cars were not a part of Tesla's mission when he
cofounded the company in 2003. The Tesla cofounder said it's a "mistake to
think of a car as a software platform."

Elon Musk has made autonomous driving a top priority at Tesla, but one of
the carmaker's original founders doesn't approve.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-fsd-full-self-driving-autopilot-risk-criticism-martin-eberhard-2023-2

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2023 03:08:25 +0000
From: Richard Marlon Stein <rmstein@protonmail.com>
Subject: Bionic_nose may help people experiencing smell loss, researchers
say (WashPost)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/01/26/smell-loss-covid-bionic-nose
-brain/

"Two scientists are working on a neuroprosthetic that may help millions with
anosmia, such as those who lost their sense of smell because of covid."