Cyberattack Disrupts Japan Airlines’ Holiday Flights

Japan Airlines (JAL) announced it was hit by a cyberattack, causing delays to more than 20 domestic flights.

JAL confirmed that the attack did not involve a virus and did not cause any customer data leaks. I Photo: Japan Airlines Facebook

However, the carrier was able to restore its systems a few hours later, Hamish McDonald reported for the Associated Press (AP).

JAL stated that the issue began on Thursday morning when the company’s network, which connects internal and external systems, started malfunctioning. Airline officials insisted that the attack had no impact on flight safety.

The carrier identified the cause as an attack designed to overwhelm the network system with massive transmissions of data. Such attacks flood a system or network with traffic until the target becomes unresponsive or crashes.

JAL confirmed that the attack did not involve a virus and did not cause any customer data leaks.

As of late morning, the cyberattack had delayed 24 domestic flights for more than 30 minutes.

Experts have repeatedly raised concerns about Japan’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities, especially as the country strengthens its defense capabilities and collaborates more closely with the United States and other partners with much tighter cyber defenses, according to Euronews.