US FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traffic control by 2028

Re:US FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traff... by gosub100 on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:24PM (#50397944)

I have heard of exploits that can root a machine from inserting a USB device (in fact, this has been used by attackers to conspicuously leave thumb drives in the parking lots of organizations they want to attack).

I have never heard of a sploit that roots your machine from inserting a floppy.

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Re:US FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traff... by ekaryotic on Saturday November 07, 2026 @04:03AM (#50402894)

floppy boot sector viruses were common back in the day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_(computer_virus) I had one infect my home pc called ripper

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Re:US FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traff... by gosub100 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @09:14AM (#50404720)

true, there were viruses, and they came over floppy. but USB has a hidden firmware layer. I remember one on Apple a few years ago they said is completely un-patchable because it affected the firmware on the USB chip itself. I dont remember what happened after that, though.

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