Cyberattacks were unleashed upon several U.S. airports on Monday including New York LaGuardia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago O’Hare, and Des Moines. Russian hacker group Killnet is being blamed.
But all that they did was take down airport websites, through denial of service attacks. Kid stuff. No crucial systems were compromised, and a few hours later websites were back up.
A Russian cyber attack has hit the websites of multiple U.S. airports, including La Guardia, ATL, ORD, LAX and Des Moines. The attack is not affecting airport/airline/security operations, only airport websites. ATL says it just brought its website back up.
— Sam Sweeney (@SweeneyABC) October 10, 2022
After “Des Moines…?” my immediate thought was to work through whether this was a display of their real capabilities, or a warning shot? But this doesn’t signal they are capable of more. A DDoS attack against a public-facing website is something any modestly savvy teenager could launch. It doesn’t serve as a message that ‘we can reach your systems, and next time will be worse.’
Instead it’s more moderately annoying for the individual airports involved at best, the kind of attack someone would launch who wanted to say that an attack was made without actually doing one.
For several hours, some flyers were unable to:
- Learn about destinations and airlines with non-stop service to their home airport
- Check out parking rates
- Get contact information for the airport’s media relations team
Russian signals intelligence, formerly part of the FSB, is surely capable of infecting systems with malware, extracting information from systems (and has been accused of leaking information it’s garnered), and more. Russian hackers have been blamed for penetrating White House computers and for last year’s Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack.
This wasn’t nearly serious enough to serve as a warning, that U.S. cyber assets would be targeted as a result of Ukraine recapturing territory and desire to re-take Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. Indeed… Des Moines‘s airport website? It wasn’t an attack on ‘critical infrastructure’ or a systems penetration meant to be found as a warning.
Meanwhile the U.S. today pledged continued support for Ukraine, including advanced air defense systems. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more and more serious actions that could serve as a deterrent, coinciding with new instances of U.S. support.
What is the US response if the Ruski’s decide to nuke Kiev?
Would the US risk another european city getting nuked for continued escalation in Ukraine?
I think Russia would sacrifice one of their own cities, but would the US or europe sacrifice one of their own for a war not even involving their own country?
How many billions more do we spend on this war, while our own country is facing a poverty and homeless crisis and drug epidemic never before seen?
Well in 2013 the Iranians did a cyber attack on a New York State dam. It didn’t work because it was down for repairs anyway and apparently they had it mixed up with another and larger one with a similar name. Putzes. But we can be attacked like this, and probably are more than the public knows. Still, I can’t imagine what the Russians expect to accomplish except to antagonize the West even more and harden our defenses further. Given what has been happening, and a certain series of examples from the 1930s, I can’t see the US and Western Europe giving up now, miserable and wasteful as this whole conflict is. There isn’t any good choice except to support the Ukraine, but nobody will be a “winner”, and as usual in wars it’s the ordinary people who suffer most.
Because of this, should the US apologize to Putin? Say we were wrong about the invasion and that it is a special military operation to de-nazify Ukraine, which is an integral part of Russia? Form a new Warsaw Pact with the US saying that an attack on Russia is an attack on the US?
They hacked PayPal too. They had a much more successful hack with PayPal,, as tons of people are now closing accounts because of something the hackers wrote.
The Des Moines thing is scary for us smaller town, flyover country folk who figure we might be ok when this thing goes hot. They’re telling us that they know we exist too.
@Lars It may be that they consider flyover states the most vulnerable given “y’all” took your eyes of the ball and decided to spend the last two years arguing that, “The Election was Stolen.” Instead flyover state conservatives could have been Reagan conservatives and realized who the real enemy is….promoting an even stronger initial defense of Ukraine to thwart the attack in February and a more hawkish balance to the threat at hand.
Russia sees low hanging fruit…who can blame them?
Of course, the Russians did it. When will people learn?
@ Jerry — Never before seen?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic_in_the_United_States
@Gene –
Yes never before seen. Crack-cocaine is candy compared to what people are injecting/popping these days
@Stuart –
I think dems are more obsessed with election deniers than election deniers are with the actual “election”. Focus on real issues instead of always trying to project your make believe superiority over others.
Does “Flaccid Russian” describe Putin?
@ Jerry — No, crack-cocaine happened to black people, so no one cared. Now, what we have is a mostly white, mostly suburban drug epidemic, and magically they should be given “help” not life in prison. Funny how that works.
More propaganda…..Probably the script kiddies at cybersecurity to gain a more lucrative contract.
@Gene
More money to be made in the “suburbs” think rehab/treatment facilities, methadone/suboxone etc rx’s. No money sending “users” to prison, last I checked there were mandatory minimum sentences in the 25 years range depending on the state for dealers caught with weight. No different than crack back in the day.