The Story & the Damage
In September 2025, a cyberattack on Collins Aerospace’s check-in / boarding software (MUSE / vMUSE / ARINC systems) disrupted operations at major European airports including Brussels, Heathrow, Berlin.
The attack disabled automatic check-in, baggage drop, boarding systems, forcing airports to revert to manual processes, causing delays, cancellations, and long queues.
- Impact specifics for Brussels:
• Of ~550 flights, 60 were cancelled during part of the disruption.
• Airlines had to use iPads, laptops, handwritten boarding passes to process travelers.
The EU cybersecurity agency (ENISA) confirmed the incident and attributed it to a third-party ransomware / cyber disruption of the provider software.
Authorities are investigating, while Collins Aerospace (under parent RTX) acknowledged a “cyber-related disruption” and is restoring systems.
Who Is at Risk?
- Airports & Aviation Infrastructure: check-in, boarding, baggage systems, service desks.
- Airlines and ground service providers relying on shared vendor systems.
- Travelers / passengers exposed to delays, cancelled flights, loss of trust.
- Critical infrastructure sectors where digital vendor dependencies exist.
- Technology providers / vendors of airline systems - failures can cascade.
Pain Points & Challenges
- Single vendor dependency: When a widely used provider (Collins) fails, many airports are impacted simultaneously.
- Lack of segmentation / isolation: Vendor software often has broad privileges across airport systems.
- Forced fallbacks to manual processes are slow, error-prone, and insufficient for scale.
- Difficulty in attribution / remediation: Unknown attacker(s), systems widely distributed, restoring full functionality takes time.
- Reputation & regulatory risk: Airlines, airports, and vendors will face scrutiny for system resilience and supply chain risk.
- Operational & financial ripple effects: cost of passenger care, flight diversions, cancellations, staff overtime, recovery, etc.
Entropya Solutions
- Digital Camouflage: Make airport vendor systems and integrations untraceable — no exposed endpoints or visible infrastructure.
- Entropya Encrypted Network (EEN): Use short duration, randomized post-quantum, one-way tunnels to connect systems, hiding topology and blocking lateral moves.
- Quantum agents are deployed to obfuscate endpoints and verify trusted connections
- Virtual Dissimulated Encrypted Servers (VDES) make vulnerabilities unfindable while maintaining high availability on public facing servers, putting them in stealth mode.
- Vendor risk shielding: Wrap third-party integrations so that even if vendor software is attacked, it cannot reveal or compromise your systems.
- Resilient fallback & isolation: Architect systems so that vendor failures don’t cascade into full downtime; Entropya can help with fallback paths that remain hidden from attackers.
- Consulting and threat modeling: Tailored for airports, aviation vendors, and critical infrastructure to anticipate and defend from vendor-based attacks.
Next Steps / Call to Action
This event underscores a crucial lesson: the weakest link in a shared system can take down multiple critical nodes at once.
If your organization relies on vendor systems or shared infrastructure, you must proactively HIDE → HARDEN → VERIFY. With Entropya, you can transform your processes and systems so attackers cannot trace, map, or disrupt them.
Don’t wait until your systems are forced offline. Let’s build untraceable resilience together.
Contact us today to protect your infrastructure and vanish from attacker radar.
Sources
- Reuters - European airports snarled by cyberattack, disruption to stretch into Sunday Reuters
- Reuters - European airports struggle to fix check-in glitch after cyberattack
- SecurityWeek — European airport cyberattack linked to obscure ransomware, suspect arrested
- World Economic Forum — Grounded. Why the European airports cyber incident is a wake-up call
- Wikipedia / Collins Aerospace cyberattack overview