Tokyo, Dec 26 Japan Airlines (JAL) announced on Thursday that its luggage check-in system is being targeted by a cyberattack, causing delays for at least 24 domestic flights, some of which by up to an hour. International flights were also impacted, it said.
The airline reported that the issues came to light around 7:25 a.m., prompting JAL to suspend ticket sales for both domestic and international flights for the rest of the day. Passengers with pre-purchased tickets can still use them.
Investigators revealed that the airline had informed authorities about a possible distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, in which multiple sources flood a network with data to overwhelm it in a short time, Kyodo News agency reported.
JAL stated that it is working to address the cyberattack and identify its source, noting that the disruption could have a broader impact on flights. The airline successfully disabled a compromised router temporarily.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan's top government spokesman, stated at a press conference that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has asked JAL to quickly resolve the system issue to properly assist affected passengers.
Other airlines, including All Nippon Airways, Skymark Airlines, Solaseed Air, and Star Flyer, reported no cyberattacks and were operating normally.
At Tokyo's Haneda airport, passengers were seen checking their phones and speaking with staff, while there was no significant confusion at Narita airport in Chiba Prefecture. A man in his 30s, traveling from Haneda to Ishigaki Island in Okinawa, expressed concern, saying, "I was able to check in fine, but it's worrying that there's trouble."
Meanwhile, a man in his 60s, headed to Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture, commented, "It's a nuisance during the busy year-end period."
A cyberattack occurs when there is an unauthorised action against computer infrastructure that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its content.
The rising dependence on increasingly complex and interconnected computer systems in most domains of life is the main factor that causes vulnerability to cyberattacks, since virtually all computer systems have bugs that can be exploited by attackers.
Although it is impossible or impractical to create a perfectly secure system, there are many defence mechanisms that can make a system more difficult to attack, making information security a field of rapidly increasing importance in the world today.
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