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German airport websites hit by DDos attacks once again

Experts are investigating the failures of several German airports after some media attributed them to a possible hacking campaign.

On Thursday, the websites of several German airports were unreachable, experts launched an investigation speculating a possible cyberattack on a large scale against the critical infrastructure.

Ralph Beisel. chief executive of the ADV airport association, confirmed that the websites were hit by a DDoS attack. She added that other systems at the airports were not impacted.

“Once again, airports fell victim to large-scale DDoS attacks,” Beisel said in a statement. “According to the information we have so far, other systems are not affected,”

The alleged cyberattack took place a day after an IT failure caused cancellations and delays for thousands of passengers of Germany’s national carrier Lufthansa at Frankfurt airport.

The attack blocked the websites of the the following airports:

  • Hannover Airport
  • Dortmund Airport
  • Nuremberg Airport
  • Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Airport
  • Dusseldorf
  • Erfurt-Weimar

Administrators at the airport confirmed that the problems were likely caused by malicious traffic.

“”We are still troubleshooting,” a spokeswoman for Dortmund Airport said, adding it was unlikely that the failure was due to a regular overload.” reported the website DW. “There is reason to suspect it could be a hacker attack,” she added.

In early January, the Pro-Russia group Killnet launched DDoS attacks against the websites of German airports, administration bodies, and banks.

The attacks are the hacktivists’ response to the German government’s decision to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the decision to send 14 tanks – and allow other countries to send theirs too (which was restricted until now under export regulations) – at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

On February 16, the group called to action on its Telegram channel against the German airports.

In October the pro-Russia hacktivist group ‘KillNetclaimed responsibility for massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the websites of several major airports in the US.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, German airports)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

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