An airport worker seen Monday manually writing a bording pass in Brussels, Belgium after Saturday’s cyber-attack left many European airports in virtual darkness. On Wednesday,s London’s Heathrow said it was “operating as normal.” Photo by Olivier Matthys/EPA
British authorities on Wednesday announced the arrest of a man in connection with cyberattacks that led to days of flight delays at some of Europe’s busiest airports.
Britain’s National Crime Agency said on Tuesday evening an unidentified West Sussex man in his 40s was arrested “as part of an investigation into a cyber incident impacting Collins Aerospace,” which is a division of Virginia-headquartered defense contractor RTX.
The chief of Britain’s NCA said Wednesday that although the arrest was a “positive step,” the investigation was still “in its early stages and remains ongoing.”
On Saturday, a cyberattack plunged European air passengers into virtual darkness as chaos ensued in a non-isolated incident with criminal gangs deploying ransomware to disrupt check-ins, boarding systems and other airport IT around the globe.
“Cybercrime is a persistent global threat that continues to cause significant disruption” in the British Isles and other places around the world, Paul Foster, the NCA’s head, told the BCC and CNN in a statement.
The unnamed man was arrested on charges of alleged abuse of Britain’s Computer Misuse Act after leading cyber-related assaults on London’s Heathrow and airports in Brussels, Berlin’s Brandenburg and Dublin in Ireland.
By Wednesday, Heathrow was “operating as normal,” according to airport officials.
A leaked internal memo suggested ongoing struggles for software provider Collins to reboot and bring check-in systems back online as airpots in Belgium reportedly used iPads and handwritten boarding passes at Germany’s Berlin-Brandenburg in gerry-rigged situations to process flights and passengers.
This summer a cyberattack on Russia’s largest airline left dozens of canceled flights after a pro-Ukrainian group took responsibility for hacking Russian computer systems.
“Given that check-in and boarding are still largely manual, longer processing times, delays, and cancellations by airlines may continue today despite the mobilization of all available resources,” Brandenburg said Wednesday.
Last summer a global IT meltdown grounded thousands of flights after an attack on Texas-based CrowdStrike that impacted United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Airlines and many spots in Europe.
Meanwhile, Collins Aerospace parent company RTX Corporation stated it appreciated the “ongoing assistance in this matter” by British authorities.
