The Japanese airline Japan Airlines (JAL) suffered a cyber attack on its communication networks this Thursday, causing a failure in its systems that has caused delays to both domestic and international flights. The company itself explained in a statement that the failure occurred “in the network equipment that connects the inside and outside of the company” although it does not know the origin.
In the published document, the airline detailed that the attack led to “a malfunction of the system that communicates with external systems” and caused delays on both domestic flights, as well as on routes to or from international destinations. Local media raise the number of domestic flights affected to 24. At the moment no route has been cancelled, although the company continues to evaluate the scope of the cyberattack and warns that the incidence could be greater.
Japan Airlines says its operational security has not been affected, although it continues to investigate the origin and scope of the cyberattack and work on recovering its systems. Its technicians detected the irregularities at 7:24 local time (22:24 GMT on Wednesday) and managed to temporarily shut down the router that they believe has been compromised by the attack.
Sources in the investigation cited by local news agency Kyodo said the airline has suggested to police that it could have been the victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, in which networks are overwhelmed by data from multiple sources over a short period of time.
Japanese Government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi stated in a press conference: “through the Ministry of Transport, we have asked JAL to repair its system as soon as possible to respond appropriately to affected customers.”
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