City Hall has confirmed email service has been fully restored to Cleveland Hopkins Airport employees following an apparent ransomware attack on the airport's computer system last week.
The city issued a statement Friday saying it "continues to provide updates on this matter to its airlines, tenants and airport staff," and that it "began the process of reformatting all of Port Control’s user computers with a new operating system and applications." Electronic board showing arrival and departure times inside the airport had already been fixed.
The boards and email systems were disrupted last week, and multiple media entities (including WKYC) reported the issue stemmed from a deliberate hack. The city initially denied those claims before reversing course this past Monday, confirming ransomware was found on the network but the city did not consider making any ransom payments.
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The city always maintained the issue did not impact airport operations and security, and all flights went off and landed as normal. Valerie McCall, the city's chief of communications, also denied the city lied to the media about the ransomware.
Following the hack, Cleveland City Council approved legislation authorizing the purchase of Black Box Network Services and IntelliNet to restore the flight and baggage information displays, restore email, and install threat protection software. The hiring of the two outside contractors will cost the city $750,000.
