Russian Hacktivists Try to DDoS US Airport Websites

At least a few US airport websites went offline on Monday after a Russian hacktivist group claimed it was launching DDoS attacks on numerous airports in the country. 

On on its Telegram channel, Russian hacktivist group “Killnet” released(Opens in a new window) a list containing dozens of US airport websites it planned on targeting. The goal has been to overwhelm the targets with a flood of internet traffic, rendering them inaccessible to the public. 

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The websites for the Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta, and Des Moines International Airport seem to have been affected. Visiting the O’Hare airport website will trigger a “connection timed out” error. Meanwhile, Atlanta’s airport website shows that it’s activated a “security service to protect itself from online attacks.”

(Credit: Atlanta Airport website)

In a statement, Chicago O’Hare also confirmed the disruption. “Early Monday, FlyChicago.com and related websites for O’Hare and Midway international airports went offline,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “No airport operations have been affected. City of Chicago IT staff are currently working to restore the website’s functionality. The City’s Information Security Office at the Department of Assets, Information and Services is investigating the cause of the outage.”

The Atlanta airport’s official Twitter account also posted about a disruption in a since-deleted tweet. “An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway,” the tweet said. “At no time were operations at the airport impacted.” 

Although Killnet sought to disrupt numerous airport websites, most of targeted sites were still up and running on Monday morning. Meanwhile, Los Angeles International Airport’s website was briefly slow to access. A DDoS assault can only target the airports’ websites—not the IT servers at the facilities. Hence, the overall impact would’ve been more of an inconvenience than an actual security threat to passengers.  

Nevertheless, the Killnet group is trying to use the disruptions to rally support. “I have already said in an interview with RT (a Russian news outlet) that America’s civilian network sector is not secure. Congress doesn’t care about its population!” the group wrote in a message on its Telegram channel. 

Killnet emerged earlier this year as a hacktivist collective that’s sided with Russia in its war against Ukraine, according(Opens in a new window) to cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows. The group has been found targeting countries including the US, which continue to support Ukraine. To hit back, Killnet has been enlisting volunteers through its social media presence to help it launch DDoS attacks against targets. Last week, the group instigated(Opens in a new window) several DDoS attacks against US state government websites, which knocked several offline.

Still, Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky is dismissive of the group’s activities. “For several days, we have been observing the news that Killnet has declared cyberwar on the governments of 10 countries. So far, the group has made several unsuccessful distributed denial of service (DDoS) attempts against government institutions in Europe,” Kaspersky said in a statement last week. “All in all, Killnet does not seem to have a track record of serious attacks, or any substantial means to carry out their threats.”