From BZ/afp
The websites of several German airports were temporarily unavailable on Thursday. A hacker attack is suspected!
According to information from the AFP news agency, 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.”
“According to the current status, we suspect a hacker attack,” said a spokeswoman for Dortmund Airport. “Our experts are currently working on solving the problem.”
“So far we have assumed that it is a DDoS attack,” said a spokesman for Nuremberg Airport. The problem first appeared there in the morning at around 08:10.
Erfurt Airport reported “considerable 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.
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.