An alarming breach that could haunt UK

THE implications for a trove of information on airport security falling into the wrong hands are extremely serious and terrifying.

Islamic State is known to be pursuing a “spectacular” to match the 9/11 attacks.

Codes, maps, routes used by royals and emergency procedures would be of huge, perhaps inestimable, value to a terror cell.

Crucially, investigators will want to know how and why someone was able to get the information on to a USB stick. And worse, get it out of their workplace – then apparently lose it.

It is deeply alarming. That it should happen at a time of such a heightened terror threat may show security procedures and controls are not as nailed down as we had all hoped.

But there is another profoundly alarming aspect to this. Repeated attempts to disrupt Britain’s infrastructure have been made in recent years – by North Korea, among others.

This sort of information could be of great value to a hostile foreign intelligence agency. It could be used to merely expose weaknesses, costing Britain a fortune to resolve.

Or for a more sinister result if open hostility grew towards the UK.