On Monday (October 10) morning, several U.S. airport websites were temporarily down following a widespread cyberattack which was reported to have been conducted by the Russian-backed hacking group Killnet.
According to a report by CNN, among the 14 airports attacked were Atlanta and Los Angeles international airports.
The New York Times reported that only LAX’s public-facing website experienced a brief interruption but that operations and airport systems were unaffected by the attack. The website was also restored shortly before 11 a.m.
In a since-deleted tweet, the official Twitter account for Atlanta International Airport tweeted, “ATL’s website (atl.com) is up and running after an incident early this morning that made it inaccessible to the public,” adding, “An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway. At no time were operations at the airport impacted.”
Killnet also took responsibility for the downtime of several U.S. state government websites last week, among them the state government websites of Mississippi, Colorado, and Kentucky.
In a post to Telegram, the group has also shared a list of its future victims it plans to target with service disruptions. The list primarily consists of U.S. state government websites, with government websites from Florida, Hawaii, Delaware, and Alabama, among what appears to be an indiscriminate and random selection.
Also on Telegram, Killnet posted an image with the caption “USA OFFLINE,” in a separate post, the term “F*** NATO” overlayed an exploding statue of liberty, eluding to the group’s motivations for the attacks being U.S. support of Ukraine.
The group has also claimed responsibility for cyberattacks against NATO member countries Lithuania and Estonia, among others.
