Update December 27, 2024: This article, originally published on December 26, now includes information from a Japan Airlines spokesperson related to the Boxing Day security incident.

Japan Airlines demonstrated that it was the victim of a cyberattack on December 26 that delayed more than 20 domestic flights from schedule, although it appears that the situation is now under control and never had any effect on flight safety. This is what we know.

The attack on Japan Airlines’ internal and external computer systems allegedly began early in the morning of Boxing Day and continued for several hours. “JAL ticket sales for domestic and foreign fights scheduled for Thursday have been suspended,” the Associated Press reported. he said, and the airline pointed to a distributed denial-of-service attack.

Kyodo News said Japan Airlines reported that “no private data was disclosed or damage caused through computer viruses” after the cyberattack. The post also said that Japan Post Co. had reported that mail and parcel deliveries were affected by flight disruptions caused by the Japan Airlines cyberattack.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a press conference that the Transport Ministry had “asked JAL to correct its formula as soon as possible to adequately respond to affected customers. “

A DDoS attack can be made effective by employing multiple compromised computer systems to release an overload of traffic, with the exploited machines adding Internet of Things devices. “From a high-level perspective,” Cloudflare describes a DDoS attack as “like an unexpected traffic jam that clogs up the highway, preventing normal traffic from reaching its destination. “

I reached out to Japan Airlines for an official statement: “We regret any inconvenience caused to our customers and related parties,” a JAL spokesperson said, “The network disruption was caused by receiving a large amount of data from an external source, resulting in system malfunctions primarily related to operations. We are committed to taking measures to prevent a recurrence.” The spokesperson also confirmed that the network disrtuption took just under six hours to recover from.

At the moment, there is no indication of who the attack was or what the motive was.

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