Japan Airlines Flights Delayed By Cyber-Attack

Japan Airlines said an hours-long disruption to its systems in the midst of the end-of-year travel rush was caused by a cyber-attack.

More than 20 domestic flights were delayed by the incident before the carrier was able to brings its systems back to normal, the JAL said.

It said there was no impact on flight safety.

JAL said the problem began on Thursday morning at about 7:24 am when the network connecting its internal and external systems began malfunctioning.

External attack

The airline said it had identified the incident as a denial-of-service attack, in which an external attacker floods a network with transmissions in order to overwhelm it and render it inoperable.

The attack did not involve a virus or cause any breach of customer data, JAL said.

More than 24 domestic flights were delayed more than 30 minutes, it said.

JAL ticket sales for domestic and international flights scheduled for same-day departure on Thursday were suspended temporarily but resumed several hours later.

At a regular government news conference chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the transport ministry told JAL to speed up efforts to restore the system and take care of affected passengers.

No other Japanese airlines were affected.

Japanese television news showed many passengers crowded into terminals at Tokyo’s Haneda airport as the attack delayed flights.

Travel rush

Offices closed beginning Saturday for the New Year holidays, the biggest celebration of the year in Japan when millions of people return to their hometowns from major cities.

In November 2023 the Japanese government said the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had been hacked, but no sensitive data on rockets or satellites was compromised.

The attack took some time to uncover, with the breach potentially having occurred during the summer but only coming to light weeks later, local media reports said.

In May of last year Nikkei reported that North Korean attackers had stolen $721 million (£573m) in cryptocurrency from Japan since 2017, citing figures from UK blockchain analysis firm Elliptic.

The figures, compiled by Elliptic on behalf of Nikkei, found that North Korean hackers had stolen a total of $2.3bn in cryptocurrency from 2017 to 2022.