LAX officials told NPR that FlyLAX.com was partially down early Monday morning. The service disruption did not compromise the airport’s internal systems and there was no operational disruption, according to authorities.
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Ashley Landis/AP
LAX officials told NPR that FlyLAX.com was partially down early Monday morning. The service disruption did not compromise the airport’s internal systems and there was no operational disruption, according to authorities.
Ashley Landis/AP
A group of pro-Russian hackers is taking credit for temporarily taking down several US airport websites on Monday, although it appeared to have no impact on flight operations.
The alleged attacks by Killnet affected the websites of Los Angeles International, Chicago O’Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson International in Atlanta, among others.
The group posted a list of airports on Telegram, asking hackers to participate in what’s known as a DDoS attack — a distributed denial of service caused when a computer network is flooded with simultaneous data streams.
The group’s call to action included airports across the country, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi and Missouri.
It was not immediately clear how many of the airports were actually hit and whether all of the victims’ countries suffered any disruption.
In a statement, LAX officials told NPR that FlyLAX.com was partially down early Monday morning.
“The service disruption was limited to the public-facing portion of the FlyLAX.com website only. No internal airport systems were compromised and there were no operational disruptions,” a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.
She added that the airport’s information technology team has restored all services and is investigating the cause. Officials have also notified the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration.
Around 1:00 PM in Atlanta, authorities said ATL.com was “down after an incident early this morning made it unavailable to the public.” But people on Twitter continued to complain about parts of the site being inaccessible for hours after the announcement was made.
Atlanta airport officials said no airport operations were affected.
In an earlier post on Monday, Killnet noted other vulnerable US sites that could be subject to similar DDoS attacks include marine terminals and logistics facilities, weather monitoring centers, healthcare systems, subway and exchanges and online trading systems.
The group congratulated a handful of teams they claimed helped push the sites offline, writing, “Whoever participated in the liquidation of the United States of America, don’t stop!”
The attacks follow another series of cyber attacks allegedly launched by the group last week. In that case, the group took credit for rounding up hackers on state government sites.
Both campaigns appear to have been fueled by anti-US sentiment over the country’s involvement in the ongoing war in Ukraine, as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues the occupation despite heavy economic sanctions.
