Pro-Russian Hackers Knock U.S. Airport Website Offline

ACROSS AMERICA — Dozens of U.S. airport websites are up and running again after a coordinated denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack organized by pro-Russian hackers made them unreachable Monday.

Flights in and out of airports were not affected by the attack, orchestrated by a shadowy group known as Killnet, a pro-Russia “hactivist” group that has been launching waves of attacks against NATO and pro-Ukraine countries.

Killnet floods its targets with junk data in the attacks, which cause no real harm like cyberattacks that hack into networks. They are intended to do the maximum amount of psychological damage, The Associated Press reported.

John Hultquist, vice president for threat intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, tweeted that denial-of-service attacks like those aimed at the airports and state governments usually dont’ last long and are “typically superficial.”

“These are not the serious impacts that have kept us awake,” he said

Airports affected by the DDoS attack were in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Missouri were affected, NPR reported.

Killnet said Sunday on its Telegram social media account that it was targeting the airports. The same group of hackers have claimed responsibility for denial-of-service attacks on state government websites in several states.

Such attacks instead tend to reveal insufficient attention by webmasters to adequate bulletproofing of sites, which now includes DDoS protection service.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.