Colorado Springs and Denver airports victims of cyberattack
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- A nationwide cyberattack affected the Colorado Springs and Denver airport websites on Monday.
A Pro-Russian 'hacktivist' group known as Killnet is taking responsibility for bringing down at least 14 airport websites around the country, including LAX, LaGuardia, and the busiest airport in the country: Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.
The airports were impacted by what's called a 'denial of service' attack. That’s when hackers enlist others to overwhelm websites with too much traffic.
"When you have many people doing it, it's called a distributed denial of service," said Dr. Shawn Murray, a cybersecurity expert in Colorado Springs. "So the website just can't handle all of the requests on the site and it shuts itself down.”
Because the Colorado Springs Airport website is hosted on the City’s website, ColoradoSprings.gov and FlyCOS.com were briefly taken offline. The airport says its website was back up by 9 a.m. Monday morning.
No flights were affected and the hackers did not have access to air traffic control or security systems.
However, the attack was still a disruption to the economy.
"It's disrupting the economy through travel," said Dr. Murray. "Think of how many people are going through airports every day. If I'm a traveler, and I can't get to your site to find out about parking or whatever other information that I'm trying to get, it can have an impact on the traveler, therefore an inconvenience and a disruption to services."
Monday's situation is at least the third cyberattack to hit a major Colorado entity in weeks.
Last month, Fremont County’s government was paralyzed by hackers, and last week the Colorado.gov website was compromised.
Dr. Murray says it's a reminder for all of us not to let our guard down.
"We have these conversations with municipal governments, and a lot of times small city governments don't have a lot of budgets associated with their I.T. infrastructure and, of course, information cybersecurity infrastructure," said Dr. Murray. "But it requires a strategic approach, and governments aren't always looking at the day-to-day operational stuff. They're looking at those things to provide services for the public, the community, and sometimes the infrastructure's overlooked."
Dr. Murray reminds everyone that hackers can and will target individuals, so don’t think this is just a problem for governments or corporations.
The number one way to become a victim is still through the classic phishing email. Never open anything that seems suspicious and always double-check where that message is coming from.
"Never, never let your guard down at any point," said Dr. Murray. "It's usually when we're tired, when we're fatigued. If you're checking your email at the end of the day because you've been busy, and you're just trying to get through emails, and you're clicking through them real fast -- that's usually when it's going to happen. So be aware of when you're fatigued and make sure you're looking at those emails and where they're coming from. And are they signed? Is it reputable? It's still the number one most effective way to get unauthorized access and hacking into your systems."
