Eurocontrol, an agency that helps manage European air traffic, confirmed that they’re currently facing a prolonged attack from pro-Russian hackers calling themselves Killnet.
A message was posted on April 19 confirming that a 100-hour-long hacking attack was aimed at disrupting Eurocontrol. However, it hasn’t disrupted any airline traffic — flights haver continued as normal. While the moment may be embarrassing for Eurocontrol and temporarily shut down the website during scheduled DDoS attacks, no serious harm was caused.
A DDoS attack is when a threat actor or hacker group intentionally overwhelms a network with massive amounts of erratic traffic, causing it to drain its resources. By flooding the network, it impacts website performance, disrupts natural traffic flow, or could even temporarily disable the website completely.
In this case, the hacker’s marathon resulted in a 100-hour DDoS attack on a major agency, putting the website and people’s data privacy in danger. Fortunately, a DDoS attack doesn’t prevent airlines from functioning, even if it caused a headache for employees and customers during the marathon.
This isn’t the first time the hacker group, Killnet, allegedly attacked airline agencies. In Oct 2022, Killnet took credit for taking multiple US airport websites offline in another prolonged DDoS attack. Previously, the group made a call to action on their public telegram, urging others to participate in the DDoS attacks.
They used the same tactic while targeting Eurocontrol — on April 19, Killnet released a post on its telegram both declaring their intent to attack and making a call to arms for others to attack.
“There are already ddosers on my team, but recruitment is underway,” Killnet said. “One skill is not enough, desire and responsibility are still important.”
Law enforcement agencies have been working to shut down these hacker groups, like Killnet, but unfortunately, they have not been caught, following this incident.