{"id":4084,"date":"2025-10-16T13:33:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T13:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/4084\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T13:33:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T13:33:21","slug":"pro-hamas-hackers-hijack-airport-loudspeakers-across-north-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/4084\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Hamas hackers hijack airport loudspeakers across North America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passengers at airports in Pennsylvania and British Columbia were stunned Tuesday when loudspeakers suddenly blasted pro-Hamas messages and slurs against President Trump<\/a> and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

Videos posted by travelers showed the unauthorized recordings echoing through terminals <\/a>at Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania and Kelowna International Airport in Canada.<\/p>\n

Screens at Kelowna also flashed messages praising Hamas<\/a> and urging \u201cFree Palestine,\u201d according to officials and witnesses.<\/p>\n

Passengers at airports in Pennsylvania and British Columbia were stunned Tuesday when loudspeakers suddenly blasted pro-Hamas messages. Dahlia Kurtz\/X<\/p>\n

President Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem. POOL\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Airport authorities said the digital break-ins targeted both public address systems and flight information displays \u2014 a form of cyber-vandalism that disrupted boarding and startled passengers but caused no flight safety issues.<\/p>\n

At Harrisburg, \u201can unauthorized user gained access to the airport PA system and played an unauthorized recorded message,\u201d airport spokesperson Scott Miller said in a statement to CNN affiliate WGAL.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe message was political in nature and did not contain any threats against the airport, our tenants, airlines, or passengers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller said the system was quickly shut off and police opened an investigation.<\/p>\n

One flight already boarding was searched \u201cout of an abundance of caution\u201d and \u201cno security issues were found,\u201d he said. The plane later departed safely.<\/p>\n

Kelowna officials confirmed a similar breach roughly 2,000 miles away.<\/p>\n

In a statement shared with CNN, the airport stated that a third party accessed both its flight information display screens and PA system.<\/p>\n

Harrisburg International Airport was one of the two airports targeted on Wednesday. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are experiencing some delayed flights,\u201d the release read.<\/p>\n

\u201cFree Palestine\u201d chants could be heard in a passenger\u2019s video reviewed by CNN.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody informed us what was going on, there was no crisis response. Everyone was just really confused,\u201d the traveler told the network.<\/p>\n

Images posted on social media showed airport screens displaying pro-Hamas slogans before staff disabled the feed.<\/p>\n

Kelowna airport said the unauthorized messages were deleted, flight information restored and work was continuing to fully reset its sound system.<\/p>\n

Canadian authorities, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Transport Canada and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, confirmed they were assisting with the investigation.<\/p>\n

No group has claimed responsibility.<\/p>\n

Since the start of the 2023 Israel-Gaza conflict, pro-Palestinian hacktivists have carried out similar digital intrusions worldwide.<\/p>\n

The hackers also piped in messages denouncing President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. AP<\/p>\n

The cybersecurity breaches highlight growing vulnerabilities in airport networks that have become increasingly reliant on cloud-based audio and display systems.<\/p>\n

In June, a criminal group penetrated the computer networks of several airlines<\/a> in the US and Canada, according to the FBI.<\/p>\n

A month later, a software outage caused chaos at major European hubs<\/a> when hackers knocked out check-in systems used by dozens of carriers.<\/p>\n

Hacktivist collectives identifying as pro-Palestinian have claimed hundreds of attacks on transport, finance, and government targets in the past two years.<\/p>\n

One network known as the Dark Storm Team<\/a> has previously targeted US airports, NATO servers and Israeli infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Others tied to the long-running<\/a> OpIsrael campaign have defaced or disabled public websites <\/a>across North America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Passengers at airports in Pennsylvania and British Columbia were stunned Tuesday when loudspeakers suddenly blasted pro-Hamas messages and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1817,3765,2962,3766,28,30,29,302],"class_list":{"0":"post-4084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-airports","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cybersecurity","11":"tag-palestine","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","14":"tag-pennsylvania-news","15":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}