Calm returns to airports after cyberattacks overcome

The police control systems at airports and all checkpoints in Cyprus have been restored after the country was targeted by six cyberattacks over the weekend, police spokesman Christos Andreou said on Monday.

Andreou told the CyBC that “the situation has normalised and upgrades to control systems, necessary considering the scale of the cyberattacks, are being carried out”.

All police control systems at both airports of the Republic, as well as other entry and exit points, were upgraded on Sunday to protect against the current visible risk, he said.

He also clarified that while the systems did not cease functioning during the upgrade, after an attempted cyberattack on airport operator Hermes’ website was averted on Friday, processing checks took much longer than usual, leading to huge queues at Larnaca airport.

Long queues formed, leading to frustration among passengers. The situation was better at Paphos airport, where passenger traffic was lower at the time, resulting in fewer disruptions.

Andreou said the upgrade was in response to the specific threats received by the Republic, but did not rule out the need for further upgrades if future attacks occur, depending on the methods used by hackers.

In the past few days, Cyprus has faced six cyberattacks targeting both government services and private companies. Among the affected entities was the government’s website.

Deputy Minister Research Nicodemos Damianou said that the hackers attacked the government’s main website, which was offline for a few minutes on Sunday, but added that the authorities coped with the incident successfully and were able to restore it.

Other targets included the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC), Bank of Cyprus, telecommunication company Cyta, and oil company EKO, as well as Hermes.

Speaking to CyBC, cybersecurity expert Eleftherios Antoniades said it is yet unknown what was the goal of the attacks.

“What we can assume is that attacks were carried out in order to ‘test’ the country’s cyber defences,” he said. “It was mostly a show of force, rather than a targeted attack.”

Antoniades added that the level of cyber security within companies and government entities in Cyprus is still dangerously low.

“Some companies might have been targeted without knowing it, because they don’t have the necessary tools in place to even identify a cyberattack.

“Unfortunately, no one can really know when similar attacks can take place,” he said.

Speaking to Alpha morning show, internet security specialist Dinos Pastos described the disruption caused by hackers as a “show of force”, rather than a concrete attack.

According to Patsos, the worst-case scenario would involve the hackers continuing to target multiple sites simultaneously in a more organised manner.

After the spate of attacks started, on Saturday communications commissioner George Michaelides warned there may be more to come.