Cyberattack delays flights and interrupts Japan Airlines ticket sales – Observador

Japanese airline Japan Airlines said this Thursday that it had been the victim of a computer attack that caused flight delays and interrupted ticket sales throughout the day.

“We can confirm that we were victims of a cyber attack and that we are dealing with the situation,” a spokeswoman for Japan’s second largest airline told France-Presse news agency.

Japan Airlines confirmed on the social network X a failure in its computer system since 7:24 am (10:24 pm on Wednesday in Lisbon), which could “potentially affect national and international flight operations”.

“The cause of the interruption was identified and resolved (…) Right now, We are checking the system recovery status“, the airline later added.

Ticket sales have been suspended for domestic and international flights departing this Thursday, Japan Airlines said.

Problems with the airline’s baggage check-in system delayed more than a dozen flights at several Japanese airports, Japanese public television NHK said.

According to Japanese news agency Kyodo, at least 14 domestic flights were delayed for up to an hour and international flights were also affected.

The value of Japan Airlines shares lost up to 2.5% during the morning session on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, before recovering slightly. At around 2pm (5am in Lisbon), it fell 0.67% in a market in an upward trend.

This is the latest computer attack against Japanese companies and agencies. In late 2023, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency announced that it had likely been the victim of a cyberattack.

In July 2023, the port of Nagoya (center), the most important in the archipelago in terms of traffic, was paralyzed by an attack by ransomwareattributed to the Russian-speaking hacker group LockBit.

Ransomware is a type of malicious computer program that exploits a company’s or individual’s security vulnerabilities and threatens victims with the destruction or blocking of access to critical data or systems until a ransom is paid.

The Japanese agency responsible for cybersecurity, the NISC, was infiltrated by hackers over a period of up to nine months, according to the Japanese press.

In February 2022, the world’s largest car manufacturer, Toyota, was forced to suspend all production in the country for a day due to a cyber attack that affected one of its suppliers.

More recently, last June, popular Japanese video-sharing portal Niconico had to temporarily suspend its services due to a large-scale cyber attack.