Update, Dec. 27, 2024: This story, originally published Dec. 26 now includes a statement from a Japan Airlines spokesperson regarding the Boxing Day security incident.
Japan Airlines proved that it was the victim of a cyberattack on December 26 that delayed more than 20 domestic flights, although it seems that the situation is already under control and never had any effect on the safety of the flight. Here’s what we know.
The attack against the Japan Airlines internal and external computer systems is understood to have started early on Boxing Day morning and continued for a number of hours. “JAL’s ticket sales for both domestic and international fights scheduled for departure on Thursday were suspended,” an Associated Press report said, with the airline pointing the finger in the direction of a distributed denial of service attack.
Kyodo News said Japan Airlines reported that “no private data was disclosed or damage caused through computer viruses” after the cyberattack. The post also said Japan Post Co. had reported that mail and package deliveries were affected by flight disruptions caused by the Japan Airlines cyberattack.
Japanese Cabinet Secretary General Yoshimasa Hayashi told a news conference that the Transport Ministry had “asked JAL to fix its formula as soon as possible to respond appropriately to affected customers. “
A DDoS attack can be made effective by employing multiple compromised PC systems to initiate an overload of traffic, with the exploited machines adding Internet of Things devices. “From a higher perspective,” Cloudflare describes a DDoS attack as “like an unforeseen traffic jam that clogs the topway, preventing normal traffic from reaching its destination. “
I contacted Japan Airlines for an official statement: “We regret any inconvenience caused to our consumers and similar parties,” a JAL spokesperson said. “The network outage was due to receiving a huge amount of knowledge from an external source, which resulted in basically similar malfunctions. We are committed to taking action to prevent this from happening again. The spokesperson also indicated that the network outage took just under six hours.
Currently there is no indication as to who was behind the attack or what the motive for it may have been.
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