Japan’s flag carrier hit by cyberattack, causing delays to its flights

Japan Airlines (JAL) on Thursday reported a cyberattack that caused delays to domestic and international flights but later said it had found and addressed the cause.

Problems with the airline’s baggage check-in system had delayed more than a dozen flights at several Japanese airports, public broadcaster NHK said, but there were no mass cancellations or major disruption.

JAL is the country’s second-biggest airline after All Nippon Airways (ANA).

“We identified and addressed the cause of the issue. We are checking the system recovery status,” JAL said in a post on social media platform X.

“Sales for both domestic and international flights departing today have been suspended. We apologise for any inconvenience caused,” the post said.

Earlier Thursday, a JAL spokeswoman told AFP the company had been subjected to a cyberattack.

Network disruption began at 7:24am on Thursday, JAL said in a statement.

Then “at 8:56am, we temporarily isolated the router (a device for exchanging data between networks) that was causing the disruption”, it added.

The airline is just the latest Japanese firm to be hit by a cyber attack.

Japan’s space agency JAXA said in 2023 that it was likely penetrated by a cyber attack by unknown entities, but no sensitive information about rockets or satellites was accessed.

The same year, Nagoya Port, one of Japan’s busiest, was crippled by a ransomware attack that was blamed on Lockbit, a Russia-based cybercrime organisation.

Japan’s National Centre of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC) — the agency responsible for defences against cyberattacks — was itself reportedly infiltrated by hackers in 2023 for as long as nine months.

In 2022, the government said a cyberattack was behind disruption at a Toyota supplier that forced the top-selling automaker to halt operations at domestic plants for a day.

More recently, the popular Japanese video-sharing website Niconico suspended its services in June because it was under a large-scale cyberattack, its operator said.

Airline is just the latest Japanese firm to be hit by a cyber attack