More details have been revealed about the cyber attacks that affected a number of US airports on Monday.
Initial reports of cyber attacks targeted 4 US airports, and over time it became clear that these were 6 airports.
According to AFP, these attacks affected the airports of Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix and St. Louis.
The attacks disrupted websites that only served travelers and not those involved in the operation.
The attacks were first reported around 3 a.m. ET, when the Airports Authority notified the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that LaGuardia Airport’s system had been infected.
Although order was restored at the airport, there were attacks on other airports across the country.
Hackers used “distributed denial of service attacks” (DDoS), which are based on flooding websites and servers with wrong traffic and confusing them, which leads to weakening or completely disabling their functionality.
According to local media, the attacks began after the suspected Russian hacking group Killnet published a list of targeted sites and encouraged its supporters to attack them.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport said the airport’s site was “reactivated after an incident earlier this morning that made it accessible to the public.”
Pointing out that the operation at the airport did not have any effect, he added: “Investigations about this incident are ongoing.”
It appears that most of the sites at the target airports are back to normal after the temporary internet outage.
Last week, the group “Killnet” claimed responsibility for attacks on a number of websites of the US government, as well as other countries opposed to the war in Ukraine.
For its part, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said it was “aware of reports of distributed denial-of-service attacks targeting multiple US airport websites.”
The spokesperson of this agency added: “We are coordinating with the institutions that may have been affected by these attacks and we will help them if necessary.”
Source: Lebanon Debate
