A ransomware attack on Cleveland Hopkins International Airport is reported to have disrupted operations pertaining to baggage and flight booking since last Monday. But fortunately, no personal info was accessed by hackers and critical operations at the airport remained unaffected.
Frank Jackson, the Mayor of Cleveland has confirmed the impact of the malware on the database of the airport terminal and added that the incident has now been contained and the suspects behind the incident are being tracked down.
FBI is reported to have been investigating the attack and the severity of the infection and the disruption estimate are yet to be analyzed.
Highly placed sources say that the malware was detected first on April 21st, 2019 disrupting the flight info display, baggage info display, and email systems. As of now, details of ransom demand are yet to be disclosed to the media. And the extra staff has been deployed to sort of airport operations manually till May 1st, 2019.
Meanwhile, the news is out that an unknown malware has encrypted the entire database of Air India (AI), an Indian government-owned airline carrier delaying more than 91 national and international flights and stranding more than 8000 passengers at the airports located across India.
As a result of the disruption, flight cancellations made at the domestic level and international level is getting delayed adding more agony to the stranded passengers at the airport.
So, far the airliner has canceled more than 470 flights per day out of 670 flight services it operates on a daily basis.
SITA, an IT operations provider for Air India (AI) denied the news reports that the disruption was caused by ransomware. However, an AI source familiar with the entire situation confirmed the news and said that IT breakdown could make the airliner report losses in the third quarter.
