A pro-Russian hacker group said it was targeting dozens of websites for U.S. airports on Monday amid continued tensions between Russia and Western countries.
In a Telegram post, Killnet offered up a list of airport websites as targets for hackers, including Chicago O'Hare International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport. A subsequent post from the hacker group depicted what looked to be a still from The Hunger Games movie franchise with text that read: "Let The Hunger Games Begin in USA 2022."
CNN reported that more than a dozen airport websites appeared to be inaccessible Monday morning, but no immediate impacts on actual airport operations were apparent.
When Newsweek attempted to navigate some of the sites Killnet listed, many seemed to be operating normally. However, there were a couple of websites, such as the ones for O'Hare and the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, that Newsweek was not immediately able to enter.
Killnet's list of targets did not include an explanation on what it was attempting to accomplish by calling on hackers to down the websites. The purported hacking push came as Russia's ongoing war with Ukraine has continued to strain relations between Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime and the West. The U.S. and other Western countries have repeatedly condemned Putin's invasion and imposed severe sanctions on Moscow to isolate the country economically.
In an earlier post on Monday, Killnet wrote that America's "civilian network sector is not secure," and alleged that Congress only cares about money and not the country's population.
Killnet wrote in another Telegram post ahead of sharing the lengthy airport list that it was inviting people to "commit DDoS [distributed denial of service] on the civilian network infrastructure of the United States of America." It encouraged hackers to take aim at all airports, sea terminals, logistics facilities, monitoring weather centers, health care systems, subways and online trading systems.
A DDoS attack, according to content delivery network Cloudflare, is a "malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic."
Meanwhile, Killnet claimed responsibility last week for the temporary downing of several U.S. state government websites, as well as for a cyberattack in August against American military company, Lockheed Martin.
Newsweek reached out to the Chicago Department of Aviation and Atlanta's Department of Aviation for comment.
Update 10/10/22, 1:30 p.m. ET: This story was updated with additional information and background.
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