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At Hopkins Airport, Officials Say Ongoing Computer Malfunction Did Not Affect Business Systems

Blank flight information screens at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. The city criticized reports blaming the outage on hackers but refused to offer any additional information on the cause. [Annie Wu / ideastream]
Blank flight information screens at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. The city criticized reports blaming the outage on hackers but refused to offer any additional information on the cause.

The city of Cleveland is attempting to clarify what it calls misinformation regarding technical problems at Hopkins Airport.

In a statement, the city and the airport say that while flight and baggage information screens and email remain down, core business systems like accounting and payroll were not compromised.  

Officials say those systems are maintained by the city, not the airport.  They say "no personal information has been compromised to unauthorized personnel." 

The city did not offer any other information about the nearly week-long problem, adding "Although there is a desire for more information than we can provide, we want you to know that unless you received information from the City by way of the daily updates it is not official." 

Sources have told Cleveland.com and WKYC-TV that the glitches are due to malware, with WOIO-TV reporting that a hacker has illegally seized the information system and won't unlock the affected servers until a ransom is paid.   

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