Shared infrastructure and systemic risk: Collins Aerospace’s MUSE platform serves many airports’ check-in and baggage drop systems, meaning a fault there ripples across multiple nations. Brussels, Heathrow, Berlin and Dublin all reported impacts. Frankfurt and Paris airports were relatively spared, showing that usage of the compromised system varies.”Although information is still limited, the disruption at several major European airports highlights how interconnected global transportation has become and how dependent it is on shared digital infrastructure,” said Darren Guccione, CEO and Co-founder at Keeper Security. “A technical incident with a single provider can quickly cascade across multiple airports.”For travellers, the fallout has meant early arrivals, long queues, cancelled flights, and constant uncertainty. Many were forced to abandon self-service check-in or leave home earlier than usual. Airports urged passengers to check flight status in advance, arrive 2-3 hours ahead for short and long flights where possible, and be prepared for manual baggage drop and check-ins.”This system is not owned or operated by Heathrow, so whilst we cannot resolve the IT issue directly, we are supporting airlines and have additional colleagues in the terminals to assist passengers,” the Heathrow spokesperson added. “We encourage passengers to check the status of their flight before traveling to Heathrow and to arrive no earlier than three hours for long-haul flights and two hours for short-haul.”Bugcrowd CEO, Dave Gerry, stressed the gravity of the incident, stating, “This will be a critical time for the affected countries to stay attentive for any opportunistic threat actors that may be looking to gain access and exploit the nation’s security systems and the common public alike.”While the exact cause of the MUSE outage remains unclear, cyberattack fears loom large. Threat groups like Scattered Spider have recently expanded into aviation, hitting carriers such as Hawaiian, WestJet and Quantas. Past breaches, from British Airways’ data exposure to Air India’s vendor compromise, show just how vulnerable airline systems can be.
First seen on csoonline.com
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