This file photo taken on August 24, 2024 shows a Japan Airlines (JAL) Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner passenger jet (C) sitting at a gate at Tokyo International Airport at Haneda. Japan Airlines on December 26, 2024 reported a cyber attack which it said could impact flights, without offering further details. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
Japan Airlines 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.
Japan Airlines (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 apologize for any inconvenience caused,” the post said.
Earlier Thursday, a JAL spokeswoman told AFP the company had been subjected to a cyber attack.
Network disruption began at 7:24 am on Thursday (2224 GMT Wednesday), JAL said in a statement.
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Then “at 8:56 am, we temporarily isolated the router (a device for exchanging data between networks) that was causing the disruption,” it added.
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JAL shares fell as much as 2.5 percent in morning trade after the news emerged, before recovering slightly.
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 cyber crime organization.
Japan’s National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC) — the agency responsible for defenses 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.
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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.