An Airline Brought To A Standstill By Ransomware

Hundreds of people were stranded at airports across India after the SpiceJet airline reported that it was hit with a ransomware attack. India’s SpiceJet airline, was forced to delay numerous flights on Wednesday 25th May after being hit by a ransomware attack that occurred the previous day. 

The company released a post to Twitter confirming that its operations had been impacted by the cyber security incident. 

Several flights were delayed on Wednesday 25th May, with passengers complaining about lack of service.
Many tweeted photographs and videos saying that they had been waiting for hours after boarding, without any response from the airline.“Certain SpiceJet systems faced an attempted ransomware attack last night that impacted and slowed down morning flight departures today,” the BBC wrote on Twitter on Wednesday 25th. 
“Our IT team has contained and rectified the situation and flights are operating normally now.”

On Thursday 26th, morning flight departures were still suffering from the effects of the cyber attack, although SpiceJet reported that the situation had been contained and rectified by its IT team. Some users took to social media to complain about the flight delays, however, the consequences of the ransomware attack could have been far worse.

Cyber security researchers stated that if the systems had been fully breached, more severe implications could have occurred such as system wide outages, exposed data, and reputation damage. 

SpiceJet is a low-cost airline and the second-largest in India based on the number of domestic passengers it carries, about 12 million a month. Based in Delhi and Hyderabad, the airline typically has about 630 flights per day and operates in 54 Indian cities as well as 15 other locations internationally. 

SpiceJet was involved in a previous cyber security incident in which the personal information over one million customers was exposed in 2020. Researchers also believe that companies should be able to respond to threats in real time to severely limit the consequences of these attacks.

SpiceJet is not alone among airlines when it comes to being slowed down by ransomware. Bangkok Airways was hit by a LockBit attack in August 2021, resulting in over 100GB of data being disclosed when the airline chose not to pay the ransom. 

SoiceJet:     IQStock:    Oodaloop:     Infosecurity Magazine:   BBC:     The Record:     The Register:   

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