Hundreds of air passengers face grounded flights and lost luggage under a simulated cyber attack scenario rehearsed by Estonia’s cyber reserve this week at Tallinn Airport.
Volunteer IT specialists worked through a crisis drill where check-in and baggage systems went offline, leaving travelers without luggage and staff processing lists by hand, ERR reported. The exercise marks the fifth time the state Information System Authority, known as RIA, has tested a critical infrastructure operator against a large-scale network disruption.
No comparable network of volunteer IT specialists exists elsewhere in the world. RIA chief expert Armani Pogosjan said that resolving such an incident in reality could take a week, but exercise teams received just one day.
“Hundreds of air passengers are left essentially without luggage, luggage does not reach the plane, real people’s lists do not reach the airlines, real people have to be checked by hand,” Pogosjan told ERR.
Pogosjan pointed to recent precedent, noting that a similar attack hit a neighboring country in Latvia a few months ago, while Dublin Airport faced a larger disruption a few years prior. Estonian critical service providers deal with daily cyber attack attempts, though incidents with real-world impact remain rare, outside of a high-profile refrigeration system hack at Selver earlier this month.
Tallinn Airport’s Riivo Tuvike said major infrastructure companies remain prime targets given the current security climate.
“The growth began when Russia attacked Ukraine,” Tuvike told ERR. “Perhaps what has now happened with AI has simply increased the number of these attacks. Because it is easier and cheaper to do, there are also more of them.”
Despite the one-day constraint to restore operations, the exercise was judged to have been a success.
