Japan Airlines reports cyber attack

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.

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

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.

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.