Transportation secretary still doesn’t totally rule out that a cyberattack may have hit the FAA, and the FBI is assisting the probe

Resumen detallado

"We think it was the installation or the router that was the bad actor. But we're open. If we see something else, we're going to continue to investigate with our federal partners and law enforcement."

Air traffic is returning to normal after a nationwide ground stop on Friday, but the investigation into the root cause is just starting, and the federal government hasn’t dismissed the possibility of a cyberattack.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters Friday night it “doesn’t appear” that a cyberattack was involved though he admitted that “there’s nothing certain right now.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy expressed confidence Saturday that foul play wan’t involved, and reiterated that message on the Sunday talk shows—but still qualified his statements.

In an interview with ABC’s This Week, he said the director of national intelligence, the National Security Agency, the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were all on a call together with “our intelligence partners” after the FAA’s communication problems emerged.

They didn’t see any chatter or “footprints” that are normally associated with a cyberattack, he added. Instead, the FAA has zeroed in on a copper wire line that was being updated to a fiber-optic cable by contractor L3Harris.

“We felt pretty comfortable that this was an internal network issue that’s owned and operated for us by L3 Harris, not an outside a factor,” Duffy said. “We feel pretty good still today that it is not a hacking event. But if the FBI comes in and says ‘no, we found something,’ obviously we’ll share that with the American people. But we have no indication that this was a hack.”

In a briefing on Saturday, Duffy explained that the changeover to the fiber-optic cable caused routers across the air traffic control system to be flooded with more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. Because it disrupted some radar feeds, the FAA ordered the ground stop to ensure safety. It was lifted about four hours later.

The installation took place in El Dorado, Arkansas, and a router from that location is now at an L3Harris lab in Florida with FAA staff, he told Fox News Sunday, adding that…

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