Swissport is responsible for most of the operations at the airport, including check-in gates, airport security, baggage handling, aircraft fuelling, de-icing and lounge hospitality. Credit: Hansueli Krapf / Wikimedia.

Airport ground services and air cargo operator Swissport has been hit with a ransomware attack that caused disruption in operations at Zurich Airport (ZRH).

Swissport is responsible for most of the operations at the airport, including check-in gates, airport security, baggage handling, aircraft fueling, de-icing and lounge hospitality.

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A spokesperson told Reuters that 22 flights were delayed by up to 20 minutes at Zurich Airport on 3 February.

On Twitter, the company announced: “A part of Swissport’s IT infrastructure was subject to a ransomware attack. The attack has been largely contained and we are working actively to fully resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Swissport regrets any impact the incident has had on our service delivery.”

Most critical systems and applications remained unaffected, but some systems were shut temporarily due to the impact on several servers.

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However, the security teams were quick to detect the attack and started restoring the firm’s IT systems.

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On 5 February, Swissport stated on Twitter: “IT security incident at Swissport contained. Affected infrastructure has swiftly taken offline. Manual workarounds or fallback systems secured operation at all times. Full system clean-up and restoration are now underway. We apologise for any inconvenience.”

As of now, no information in connection with the ransomware operator and the type of ransomware used against the company is available.

In May 2020, UK-based easyJet too faced a cyberattack from a ‘highly sophisticated source’, which breached the data of around nine million travellers.