L3Harris

FAA Ground Stop Not Attributed to Hacking as FBI Examines Software Update

US officials have found no evidence that hackers caused the outage that led the Federal Aviation Administration to halt flight departures nationwide on November 13. The FBI is reportedly examining whether a software update was responsible for the communications failure. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated that the incident did not appear to be the result of a cyberattack and described the failure as mechanical, noting the absence of attack indicators such as chatter or footprints. Multiple agencies including the NSA, Department of Defense, and CISA participated in the investigation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the outage to legacy equipment where switches and routers were flooded with data after patches and new technology installations overwhelmed the older system. CBS News reported that the outage followed an update to the private communications network operated by L3Harris, which rebooted and then crashed. Officials confirmed the incident was unrelated to the earlier Microsoft outage and that recently deployed AI systems played no role.