The pro-Russian hacktivist group "KillNet" claims to have carried out large-scale denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the websites of several major airports in the US, rendering them inaccessible.
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DDoS attacks have flooded the servers hosting these websites with garbage requests, making it impossible for travelers to log in and receive updates about their scheduled flights or book airport services.
Notable examples of airport websites that are currently unavailable include Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), one of the country's largest air traffic hubs, and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), which is intermittently offline or responding very slowly.
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Other airports returning database connection errors include Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Orlando International Airport (MCO), Denver International Airport (DIA), Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), along with some in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Hawaii.
The KillNet group registered the domains yesterday on its Telegram channel, where members and volunteers of the hacktivist group gather to acquire new targets.
They rely on custom software to create fake requests and garbage traffic directed at targets with the aim of exhausting their resources and making them unavailable to legitimate users.
In this case, DDoS attacks do not affect flights, but they still have a negative impact on the operation of a critical economic sector, threatening to disrupt or delay related services.
The KillNet group had previously targeted countries that sided with Ukraine, such as Romania and Italy, while the Legion "subgroup" hit key entities in Norway and Lithuania for similar reasons.
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As the war in Ukraine has entered a new phase, pro-Russian threat actors and hacktivists are attempting to intensify cyberattacks against key organizations in the Western world.
The US, as the de-facto leader of NATO, which is Russia's main military adversary, has supplied Ukraine with intelligence and equipment since the beginning of the war, but DDoS attacks so far have seemed to focus on EU targets, especially after the sanctions were announced.
The KillNet group's targeting scope expanded to include the US just last week, when the group attacked government websites in Colorado, Kentucky, and Mississippi – without much success.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
