Websites for more than a dozen US airports were taken offline on Monday morning in a series of cyberattacks claimed by a group of Russian-speaking hackers. The targets included public-facing pages for major hubs such as New York's LaGuardia and Chicago's O'Hare airports.
The group, known as Killnet, which supports the Kremlin but is not believed to be directly state-sponsored, used distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to overwhelm servers with traffic, rendering the sites inaccessible. Most affected websites have since been restored.
A senior US official told ABC News that the attacks did not disrupt air traffic control, internal communications, or other critical operations, but acknowledged that they caused inconvenience for travellers seeking information on wait times and capacity. The official described it as a 'denial of public access'.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was alerted to the breach at around 3am ET on Monday, with LaGuardia being the first reported victim. Other targeted airports included Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson and Los Angeles International.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirmed it was monitoring the situation and assisting affected airports. No direct link to a foreign state has been established, according to Reuters. Separately, a similar DDoS attack hit railway communication networks in northern Germany, causing widespread service disruption.
