.jpg "Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Liew Vui Keong (left) and Transport Minister Anthony Loke arrive at Parliament in Kuala Lumpur October 29, 2019. u00e2u20acu201d Picture by Shafwan Zaidon")
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 29 — The Transport Ministry did not find any element pointing to cyber attacks that disrupted flights and business operations for nearly a week at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) last August.
Its minister Anthony Loke told the Dewan Rakyat during Question Time today that the massive outage was because the airport’s 21-year old Core Network Switches (CNS) system had not been upgraded since operations began in 1998.
“It was never changed. The core switches connect the entire network system at KLIA,” Loke replied Mersing MP (PH) Datuk Abdul Latiff Ahmad.
He said his ministry had set up a special committee to investigate the incident and found no evidence of a cyber attack.
The police also launched its own investigation on the possibility of sabotage.
KLIA’s Total Airport Management System was crippled from the night of August 21 to August 25 due to the CNS glitch.
It had affected multiple systems including flight information display, baggage handling and immigration.
This in turn created flight delays and during the incident which lasted for a few days, passengers were advised to come hours earlier for their flights.
*Editor’s note: This version is an update of an earlier article that erroneously reported the transport minister as denying sabotage in the airport network glitch. Malay Mail apologises for any confusion to readers.
