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UK Arrest Over Ransomware Attack That Disrupted European Airports
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
The UK authorities took a man into custody accused of participating in a cyberattack that caused disruptions at Heathrow Airport and three other major European airports.
In a rush? Here are the quick facts:
- A man in his forties was arrested in West Sussex over ransomware.
- The NCA called the arrest a “positive step” but said investigations continue.
- Cyberattacks on aviation rose 600% last year, according to Thales.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) confirmed that a man in his forties was arrested in West Sussex on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act. He has since been released on bail while the investigation continues.
The NCA’s deputy director Paul Foster described the arrest as “a positive step” but warned, “the investigation into this incident is in its early stages and remains ongoing”.
According to an internal Heathrow memo, engineers at Collins Aerospace tried to restart services on Monday, but eventually had to rebuild the affected systems from scratch, as noted by Cyberpress .
The company’s parent, RTX Corporation, confirmed in a notice to US regulators that ransomware was behind the disruption, though it did not specify which group was responsible, as reported by TechCrunch .
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) also confirmed ransomware was used in the attack, which encrypted critical files and demanded payment in cryptocurrency, as reported by Reuters .
Such attacks are becoming more common: a report from French aerospace company Thales shows cyberattacks on aviation have risen by 600% in the past year, noted the BBC.
While Collins Aerospace has not given a timeline for recovery, it has advised airlines and ground handlers to continue using manual workarounds for at least another week.
Image by UX Indonesia, from Unsplash
Study Warn AI May “Flood” Literature With Synthetic Research
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
AI is enabling the mass production of near-identical scientific papers that slip past plagiarism checks, raising concerns about the surge of low-quality academic publications.
In a rush? Here are the quick facts:
- Researchers found 400+ redundant AI-generated papers in 112 journals since 2021.
- ChatGPT and Gemini can rewrite studies to evade plagiarism detection.
- Experts warn paper mills may exploit AI to mass-produce fake studies.
In a preprint posted on Nature , researchers revealed that 112 journals published more than 400 duplicate papers throughout the last 4.5 years.
These copycat studies, based on the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), reused the same data to report nearly identical findings.
“If left unaddressed, this AI-based approach can be applied to all sorts of open-access databases, generating far more papers than anyone can imagine,” says Csaba Szabó, a pharmacologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
“This could open up Pandora’s box [and] the literature may be flooded with synthetic papers,” Szabó added, as reported by Nature.
The researchers demonstrated how easy it is to misuse AI: they asked ChatGPT and Gemini to rewrite three redundant NHANES studies. “We were shocked that it worked straight away,” says co-author Matt Spick of the University of Surrey. The AI-written manuscripts evaded plagiarism detectors used by publishers.
“This shouldn’t be happening, and it doesn’t help the health of the scientific literature,” adds Spick.
Editors are worried that companies selling fake papers, also known as paper mills, could exploit this loophole. “These are completely new challenges for the editors and the publishers,” says Igor Rudan at the University of Edinburgh.
Publishers have started to implement new measures to address this issue. Frontiers flagged 32% of the identified papers saying these studies were published before their new integrity policies took effect. Springer Nature, whose journals carried 37% of the papers, vowed investigations.
“We take our responsibility towards maintaining the validity of the scientific record very seriously,” says Richard White, editorial director for Scientific Reports.
“AI-driven redundancy, in general, poses a serious and ongoing challenge to publishers,” says Elena Vicario, Frontiers’ head of research integrity.
