SEATAC, Wash. — Port of Seattle officials said Monday afternoon SEA Airport is dealing with the fallout of a cyberattack that affected tens of thousands of travelers over the weekend.
A Port of Seattle spokesperson said at a press conference there were "nefarious characters" on the airport's system early Saturday morning, so crews pulled the entire system offline as a precautionary measure. Officials did not have any more details on the cyberattack. There is no timeline for when the airport's system will be back online.
In the meantime, officials recommended travelers use mobile boarding passes, print boarding passes ahead of time and check baggage before arriving at SEA Airport. These measures could speed up the check-in process, officials said.
According to the Port of Seattle, certain services might not be available as of Monday. The SEA visitor pass, airport lost and found and Wi-Fi at the airport are unavailable. Checkpoint wait times and flight info are not available on airport display screens either.
Despite many airport services not being online, the Port of Seattle said checkpoint lines are "not problematic" as of Monday. Thousands of travelers waited in crowded lines over the weekend as SEA Airport responded to the cyberattack.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was not impacted by the weekend cyberattack, however. Passengers were screened without any issues because the agency is on a separate, security network unrelated to SEA Airport.
Unlike the CrowdStrike outage in July, this recent cyberattack is a SEA Airport issue, according to the Port of Seattle. The July incident was an airline issue while last weekend's cyberattack was an airport issue, the spokesperson said.
The Port of Seattle said this summer has been one of SEA Airport's busiest ever. Within one week in August, two individual days set records for passengers traveling through the airport - each day topping over 198,000 passengers.
SEA Airport is expected to set a new record for passengers traveling through the airport at the end of 2024. Officials are anticipating a flux of people traveling for the upcoming Labor Day holiday.