U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) says that a computer
outage that impacted airport security checkpoints across the country Monday
night doesn't appear to have been caused by a cyberattack.
"No indication the disruption was malicious in nature,"
the CBP tweeted Monday.
An initial investigation instead revealed the problem was due to
changes that had been made on Dec. 28 to the software used to process
travelers, the CBP said Tuesday.
The outage lasted from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time on Monday,
slowing entry for international travelers at the end of the New Year's holiday.
The CBP declined to be specific about how long the delays
were, saying only that "travelers at some ports of entry experienced
longer than usual wait times."
Traveler Chinedu Elendu told CNN that the outage held him up
for 90 minutes at San Francisco International Airport.
During the disruption, the CBP still had access to national
security databases, so passengers were still processed but at a slower pace
than normal, the agency said.
The agency is conducting tests to determine the cause of the
outage.
In a statement Tuesday, the U.S. Travel Association used the
outage to call for a federal action to update CBP computer systems.
"What happened at customs airport checkpoints yesterday
is disturbing, but unfortunately it is not surprising. Technology at these
facilities is too outdated to cope with existing travel volume, let alone the
increased traffic we hope and expect to see at our gateway airports in years to
come," U.S Travel CEO Roger Dow said.