The UK’s Home Office has denied that there is any evidence of a cyber attack, following an IT outage affecting airport border control systems, which power the e-gates that automatically identify and verify incoming passengers’ passport details.
“At no point was border security compromised and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity”, the Home Office said in an emailed statement earlier today.
According to reports, most airports have confirmed that the system is now back up and running.
The IT failure impacted many of the UK’s biggest airports with the glitch taking around four hours to fix, during which time large, two-hour queues had built up. Passports had to be checked manually while the outage was being dealt with.
Exact details of the glitch have not been released, and, although a cyber attack has been denied, the event occurred 24 hours after the Ministry of Defence reported that its payroll system, managed by a third-party supplier, had been hacked.
The e-gate system is operated by Border Force, a law enforcement command within the Home Office.
According to Reuters, the automated border gate system also crashed in May 2023, causing long queues and hours of delays for passengers.
Last year TI reported that the UK’s national air traffic system (NATS) went down last August when a network-wide technical issue had a major impact on aviation, grounding hundreds of flights and causing severe delays.