Bristol Airport is still working to restore ‘site-wide coverage’ and operation of its digital flight information displays after the airport’s administration system was the subject of a cyber-attack.
The incident started on Friday and the airport, which has flown some 4,874,943 passengers this year to-date, quickly put out warnings to customers via social media to expect delays and plan ahead.
In a statement to Computer Business Review Bristol Airport confirmed that “part of Bristol Airport’s administrative systems were subjected to an on-line criminal attempt.”
“A number of processes, including the application providing data for flight information screens in the terminal were taken off line purely as a precautionary measure, while the problem was contained and to avoid any further impact.”
This action resulted in staff at the airport having to manually write out flight times and gates on white boards.
All very high tech at Bristol Airport pic.twitter.com/Y96vkveUoh
— Hayley Trim (@hayleytrim) September 14, 2018
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Bristol Airport have stated that: “Flight operations remained unaffected.”
The attack seems to be of the ransomware variety, however spokesman James Gore commented to BBC that no ransom had been paid to get the airports systems back up and running.
Bristol Airport has informed Computer Business Review that: “Live flight information has now been restored to digital screens in key locations throughout the terminal at Bristol Airport.”
However they did note that “work continues to restore site-wide coverage,” suggesting that some sections of the airports administration system are still under a containment process while the IT teams work to clean the malware from the system.
Last month Gatwick Airport also had to utilise its white boards and marker supply when it suffered issues with its flight display system.
That issue was ultimately blamed on a damaged fibre optic cable that was feeding the airport with the flight information.
For more on our earlier reporting on Gatwick’s issues,
See Also: Gatwick Cloud-Based Screen Outage Blamed on Vodafone Cable Damage
As of today the flight information digital displays in Bristol airport are running again in key areas.
Live flight information has now been restored to digital screens in key locations in the terminal. pic.twitter.com/pm4R0sZ4eX
— Bristol Airport (@BristolAirport) September 16, 2018
Dave Lees, CEO of Bristol Airport commented that: “We are grateful to passengers for the patience they have shown. We would also like to thank colleagues, airlines and business partners whose hard work has enabled flights to operate to schedule during this difficult time.”
