Major US airport websites taken offline, pro-Russia hacking group takes credit
The websites of more than a dozen U.S. airports,
including New York City's LaGuardia Airport, were temporarily taken offline
Monday morning by cyber-attacks claimed by a pro-Russian hacking group.
Affected airports include Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta
International Airport, LaGuardia in New York City, Los Angeles International
Airport, Chicago O'Hare International Airport and Atlanta Ha
Included. The
attack does not seem to have affected airport operations.
The attacks did not affect air traffic control,
internal airport communications or other critical operations, a senior official
said. But the official said the disruption caused "inconvenience" for
passengers trying to access information.
The hack has been attributed to a group known as
Killnet, Russian hacktivists who support the Kremlin but are not considered
direct government actors. The group supports distributed denial of service
(DDoS) attacks, which work by flooding computer servers with traffic to disable
them.
KillNet – which has stepped up hacking efforts against countries opposed to Russia's war in Ukraine – previously carried out attacks targeting government websites in Colorado, Kentucky and Mississippi last week and a congressional website in July. The responsibility was accepted.
Officials first became aware of the problem at 3 a.m. ET on Monday, when the Cyber security and Infrastructure Security Agency was notified that LaGuardia's systems had been compromised, ABC News reported.
Rebecca Koffler, a former Defense Intelligence
Agency officer and author of "Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to
Defeat America," said, "Vladimir Putin is trying to pressure
Americans to stop providing military aid to Ukraine." And added that it is
part of their ideology to disrupt the normal functioning of society in a way
that hurts the people there. The goal is to get to the point where people are
fed up with the suffering and abandon Ukraine from the US government. Demand
it."