On Sunday, hackers attacked the Warsaw's Chopin airport. As the hackers infiltrated the airline ground computer systems that is used to issue flight plans the Polish airline LOT was forced to cancel 10 foreign and domestic flights, affecting around 1,400 passengers. The Airlines confirmed that there were no airborne planes affected.
The LOT Polish Airlines were taking care of the passengers on Sunday evening, as they were providing hotels for those who needed to stay overnight.
LOT Polish Airlines stated: "The situation after the IT attack on our ground operation system is already under control. We are working on restoring the regularity as soon as possible. Our operating center is already preparing flight plans. We will try to ensure that the largest number of passengers are informed and continue commenced journeys."
Adrian Kubicki Airline spokesman stated, the cyber attacked paralyzed LOT's computers at Warsaw's Frederic Chopin airport and eventually the problem was solved around 8 p.m., then on Monday the airport operations became normal again.
The spokesman also said, there were no other airports that were affected on the attack, and the authorities are investigating the cause of the cyber attack. Polish Airlines used a state-of-the-art computer systems, it means this could potentially be a threat also to other airlines.
According to CNN, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations sanctioned group designed to help develop global aviation standards, stated, "Currently cyber security is a relatively minor issue in civil aviation, but this is changing," the international group also said "Although the adoption of new technology is an ongoing activity in civil aviation, the current pace and extent of new information technologies is notably increasing the risk from cyber attacks."
On Monday morning, a representative at LOT Polish Airlines told CBS News, the hackers affected the airlines' email and web access in their offices the reason why they could not issue flight plans during the outage.
