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U.S. airport websites reportedly hit by Russian hacking group

A pro-Russia hacker group is reportedly responsible for temporarily shutting down the websites of more than 12 U.S. airports on Monday, including Atlanta International Airport (pictured), security officials confirmed. File Photo by David Tulis/UPI
1 of 4 | A pro-Russia hacker group is reportedly responsible for temporarily shutting down the websites of more than 12 U.S. airports on Monday, including Atlanta International Airport (pictured), security officials confirmed. File Photo by David Tulis/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 10 (UPI) -- A pro-Russia hacker group is reportedly responsible for temporarily shutting down the websites of more than 12 U.S. airports on Monday, security officials confirmed.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Chicago O'Hare International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport were among those affected. All three are among the busiest in North America.

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Websites for the affected airports were all offline for a brief period of time, making it impossible for people to access them.

A Federal Aviation Administration flight tracking website also was offline.

New York's LaGuardia Airport first reported the issue around 3 a.m. EDT on Monday, notifying the FAA as well as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. An airport official termed the issue "an inconvenience."

"ATL's website is up and running after an incident early this morning that made it inaccessible to the public. An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway. At no time were operations at the airport impacted," Atlanta's airport confirmed on Twitter early Monday afternoon.

Des Moines International Airport was also affected and confirmed its website was up and running after 10 a.m. CDT.

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"Obviously, we're tracking that, and there's no concern about operations being disrupted," U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency chief of staff Kiersten Todt said Monday at a security conference.

A Russian hacking group known as Killnet is believed to be responsible for the distributed denial-of-service attack. The group has targeted organizations in NATO countries after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Killnet routinely posts lists of targeted websites on its Telegram channel.

Monday's attack comes just days after state government websites in Colorado, Connecticut, Mississippi, and Kentucky were hit by outages caused by the same group.

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