Computer Virus Briefly Hits Airport Baggage Scanners

A virus in the computer system operating baggage-scanners at the international airport in Bangkok rendered the scanners dysfunctional. But on June 21, 2007 experts were able to control the virus following which the airport resumed normal functioning, authorities said, and International Herald Tribune published it in news on June 21, 2007.

In the airport there are 26 Computer Tomography X-Ray machines, which scan the baggage and take their pictures to analyze them with the help of algorithms coming from a server. When the virus crept into the server it led to crash down of 20 of 26 advanced scanners at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport in the late hours of June 20, Kluge Pakakrong, Airports of Thailand's acting president said.

The problem also disabled the conveyor-belt. As a result, the airport staff had to manually take the baggage to an inspection room where a bomb-detector system X-rayed them.

AoT (Airports of Thailand) Chairman General Saprang Kalyanamit divulged that he had instructed officials to probe into the cause of the incident and find out ways to stop it from occurring again. Although he said the cause of the trouble could be a human error, he did not explain further, as published by International Herald Tribune on June 21, 2007.

Another executive of AoT said that the virus entered when a company employee inserted a memory-stick into the system not suitable for it, as reported by Dow Jones Newswires.

Meanwhile, according to fresh reports, 10 of the total 26 CTX-ray machines deployed at Suvarnabhumi Airport to locate bombs during luggage scanning are inoperable and need replacement of parts, said Deputy Transport Minister Sansem Wongcha-um on June 25, 2007.

Chaowalit Paka-ariya, AoT VP for the Baggage Handling System Department explained the incident with CTX scanners before the committee on transportation of the National Legislative Assembly.

Chaowalit said the virus had been removed from two servers while the cleaning process for the other two was going on. He named GE Invision whose technicians would be examining how and what all conditions aided the virus to disrupt the servers. He also announced for a check into any security breach, as per the news published by Bangkokpost on June 25, 2007.

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» SPAMfighter News - 7/5/2007