The Gulf Online quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Fellow Zack Gold on airport security measures following the deadly bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula:
“The Russians are saying that this was a very small TNT-based IED [improvised explosive device], which is certainly not a challenge for [local IS affiliate] Wilayat Sinai to design,” says Zack Gold, an expert in Sinai security and Nonresident Fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. “They are putting together explosives like this on an almost daily basis.”
Describing the apparent device as “rudimentary,” Gold speculates that the method of attack likely involved one or more IS-linked employees bypassing security screening at the airport and planting the bomb in the passenger cabin. On the surface, that makes it a less sophisticated attack than two recent high-profile, but unsuccessful, attempts by Al Qaeda: the 2009 underpants bomb plot and the 2010 cargo bomb plot. Both of those attacks involved intricately-designed PETN plastic explosives that passed through airport scanners undetected, but ultimately failed to detonate once aboard.