Bristol Airport has issued an official statement a few hours ago saying that a cyber attack caused the information screens to go out of service on both Friday and Saturday. As a result of this glitch, the airport witnessed a meltdown for 3 full days making holidaymakers read their flight departure times off whiteboards spread across the airport.
James Gore, the airport spokesperson confirmed that the database of the world’s 9th busiest airport was hit by ransomware attack. But did not specify the ransomware variant’s name as the investigation was still going on in full swing.
The cyber incident not only witnessed digital meltdown but also caused a lot of chaos at the airport. Some passengers said that they received a message/phone call from the airport authorities to arrive early in order to give the airport staff plenty of time for check-in procedures. A few of them said that they were almost 4-5 hours before, but still could not manage to complete the check-in process even before 25- minutes of their flight takes off.
In other news related to a cyber attack incident on World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), reports are flowing in that Swiss Prosecutors have received evidence that Russian agents tried to hack the WADA.
Since criminal proceedings were launched in March 2017 on suspicion of some political espionage; a detailed probe on Russian involvement was being carried out by Office of the Attorney General (OAG).
OAG released a press statement last week and said that two individuals were identified as suspects in this incident and the Swiss Intelligence service is said to have gathered evidence that the two were involved in a Russian plot targeting a Swiss-based laboratory which was testing nerve agents’ attacks in Salisbury where Mr. Skripal was murdered.
The Swiss media on Saturday confirmed that Russian intelligence did carry out cyber attacks on WADA and the International Olympic committee in retaliation to the ban of Russian players from the Olympic Games.
However, the Russian Embassy in Bern said that the latest Swiss media reports on WADA Cyber Attacks were simple fairy tales and was merely an attempt to derail the reinstatement of Russia’s own anti-doping authority.
A GandCrab ransomware attack on Monroe Country School District is reported to have disrupted the digital operations of the Florida based educational organization for almost one week. The incident is said to have occurred on September 9th this year but was brought to media light after one full week. Authorities of the school chose not to pay the hackers and instead decided to go with the backups for data recovery.
The North Korean Foreign Affairs Ministry has dismissed all media reports which claimed that a North Korean National was responsible for 2014 Cyber attacks on Sony and the spread of Wannacry Ransomware in May 2017. The statement comes just after a week when the US Department of Justice (DoJ) openly confessed that Park Jin Hyok- a hacker working for North Korean Intelligence was responsible for the above-said attacks.
US Officials claim that Park was a former member of North Korean Intelligence Group ‘The Reconnaissance General Bureau’ and a member of Lazarus Hackers Group which is being funded by the Kim Jong Un led government.
North Korea says that the statement released by US DOJ was a figment of US law enforcement’s wild imagination and they are certain that as usual they are/will never be strong evidence to prove the matter.
