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U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) says that a computer outage that impacted airport security checkpoints across the country Monday night doesn’t appear to have been caused by a cyberattack.
“No indication the disruption was malicious in nature,” the CBP tweeted Monday.
An initial investigation instead revealed the problem was due to changes that had been made on Dec. 28 to the software used to process travelers, the CBP said Tuesday.
The outage lasted from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, slowing entry for international travelers at the end of the New Year’s holiday.
The CBP declined to be specific about how long the delays were, saying only that “travelers at some ports of entry experienced longer than usual wait times.”
Traveler Chinedu Elendu told CNN that the outage held him up for 90 minutes at San Francisco International Airport.
During the disruption, the CBP still had access to national security databases, so passengers were still processed but at a slower pace than normal, the agency said.
The agency is conducting tests to determine the cause of the outage.
In a statement Tuesday, the U.S. Travel Association used the outage to call for a federal action to update CBP computer systems.
“What happened at customs airport checkpoints yesterday is disturbing, but unfortunately it is not surprising. Technology at these facilities is too outdated to cope with existing travel volume, let alone the increased traffic we hope and expect to see at our gateway airports in years to come,” U.S Travel CEO Roger Dow said.
Sourse: travelweekly.com
 says that a computer outage that impacted airport security checkpoints across the country Monday night doesn't appear to have been caused by a cyberattack. "Pin It")