CLEVELAND — After nearly a week of being down, the flight and baggage screens at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport are up and running Monday morning.
Airport officials are blaming malware and not hacking for the technical issues, but experts News 5 spoke to said there isn't much of a difference between malware and hacking.
The city said there were no ransom demands and unauthorized personnel never had access to the systems.
The FBI joined efforts with city and airport officials to determine what caused the technical issues at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
But a cybersecurity expert with Strongsville-based Trusted Sec believes what happened is likely criminal.
"You usually wouldn't bring in the FBI if you just had a hard drive that failed," said Paul Sems. "If a system was off-line because of a power outage or a bad power supply, you'd call the vendor of that system and you'd bring it in and you'd be back up and running shortly. The fact that they have made a public statement that the FBI is involved and that the FBI does have an internet crime division, it makes us speculate there was a some type of electronic or computer fraud that was taking place."
News 5 repeatedly asked airport officials if the technical issues were the result of a hack or some kind of malicious intrusion into the airport’s systems. Last week, officials would not comment on whether or not their systems were hacked.
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