US Airports Struck by Cyber-Attacks
Security representatives are investigating a possible link to the Kremlin.
On Monday, a variety of major airports around the United States were hit with a denial of service attack, overloading their services and bringing their operation to a virtual standstill. The attack is believed to be the work of “Killnet,” a pro-Russian hacker group.
“At this time, the attacks have not been impactful, though we are closely monitoring these attacks and any others. We are also sharing information on these attacks with TSA, CISA and other airports,” a spokesperson for Denver International Airport told ABC News.
Investigations are currently underway to determine whether or not Killnet was acting under direct orders of the Russian government, though security personnel believe it’s still too early to determine.
“We just don’t really understand fully who’s behind this, what the motivation was, certainly at what level — if any — Kremlin officials were aware. We just don’t know,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC News.
BREAKING: Some of the nation's largest airports have been targeted for cyberattacks by an attacker within the Russian Federation, a senior official briefed confirms to @ABC News. https://t.co/MkbgjppHWU
— ABC News (@ABC) October 10, 2022
“We’re grateful that no airport operations were affected, no safety was put at risk, but we’re looking into this,” he added. “We’re going to investigate this, we’re going to try to get to the bottom of it and obviously we take cyber resilience very, very seriously, regardless of what happened at these airports.”
Killnet has been operating since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, primarily targeting both Ukraine and any countries confirmed to be allied with Ukraine in a variety of virtual attacks. In spite of this, no concrete evidence has been found that the group has Russian state backing.