Suspected hacker attack: websites of several airports fail

At least five German airports complained about problems with their websites in the morning: The pages are overloaded and not accessible, they say. The flood of access is probably systematic. That suggests a hacker attack.

The websites of several German airports were temporarily unavailable in the morning. At least the airports in Düsseldorf, Nuremberg, Dortmund, Hanover and Erfurt were affected. The cause was not initially clear, a hacker attack was suspected.

“We can confirm that our website is currently unavailable,” said a spokesman for Düsseldorf Airport. “The cause of the disruption has not yet been conclusively determined, the analyzes by our IT partners are still ongoing.” A spokeswoman for Dortmund Airport said: “According to the current status, we suspect a hacker attack. Our experts are currently working on solving the problem”. The problem first appeared at Nuremberg Airport around 08.10 in the morning. “We suspect so far that it is a DDoS attack,” said a spokesman. Erfurt Airport reported “significant hits”. “The customers are not,” said a spokesman. “It seems to be systematic.”

In so-called DDos attacks, servers are bombarded with so many requests that the system can no longer cope with the tasks. As a result, the affected websites are often temporarily unavailable. It is a comparatively primitive form of cyber attack. Data is usually not tapped. Since the beginning of the Russian attack on Ukraine, such cases have increased in Europe. According to a report in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, a Russian hacker group claimed responsibility for the attack. She claims to have disrupted the websites of six airports.

The alleged attack comes at a particularly sensitive time: the Verdi union has called for a strike at several airports on Friday. The airports in Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Hamburg and Stuttgart announced that regular flight operations would have to be stopped on Friday. The airport association ADV estimates that more than 295,000 passengers will be affected by the strike. So the need for information is currently high.