After American Airlines grounded flights for an hour on Christmas Eve due to an unspecified ‘technical issue’, Japan Airlines was hit by a cyberattack today. The incident occurred on Thursday morning (starting at 7:24 AM local time), as Japan Airlines aka ‘JAL’ confirmed, with the possibility of impacting both its domestic and international flights. The attack impacted both the internal and external systems of the airline, as stated by JAL, the airline that flies to 220 destinations in 35 countries. This caused a temporary shutdown of a router, leading to malfunctions and the suspension of ticket sales for flights.
However, as per the latest update, the systems returned to normal, and the ticket sales service was also restored after a few hours of disruption. Having a fleet of 279 aircraft, JAL provided no immediate update regarding the services or flights affected by the attack. The company posted on X, stating, “Today, from 7:24 AM, we have been under a cyber attack on our internal and external network devices, causing problems with the systems that communicate with external systems. We expect this to affect both domestic and international flights.”
Japan is no stranger to cyberattacks, as earlier in June this year, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that it had been attacked four times by cybercrime groups. Not only that, during the same month, a cyberattack interrupted the operations of the popular Japanese video-sharing platform Niconico.
Before this, Toyota witnessed a cyberattack in 2022, which caused a halt in production at its domestic plants for a full day. In addition, in 2021, a ransomware attack targeted several government agencies, including the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and other ministries.
Speaking about the surge in cyberattacks across the globe, data from Check Point – a cybersecurity solutions company – shows that the third quarter of 2024 experienced an all-time high of 1,876 average weekly cyberattacks per organization, a staggering 75% increase from the previous year. For example, a major remote access tool provider – TeamViewer – experienced a cyberattack on its corporate network in June 2024, attributed to APT29, a hacking group linked to Russian intelligence.
