Delta Airlines has suspended its flight operations for the second time in a week after its critical computer systems stopped working. As a result of this technical snag, the airlines had to cancel 170 flights on Sunday and over 110 on Monday as its essential IT systems failed to resume even after 29 hours.
The staff of the said US airlines which generates over $40 billion worth of revenue each year and has over 83,000 employees working across the world is totally clueless on these developments. A top official from the Delta said that the IT systems shutdown could be a mischief of some hackers. But she denied the presence of a state-sponsored actor behind this hack.
What’s astonishing in this cyber attack is that it comes exactly after a week of a similar glitch which brought down computer systems at United Airlines.
However, there is no evidence which proves that both these cyber attacks were launched by the same hacker/hacking group.
John Carlin, the one-time Chief of Staff at FBI Headquarters says that there could be a possibility of American airlines being cyber attacked for a purpose. Because of airlines, like banks, are part of United States Critical Infrastructure, they are many adversarial nations who might have an interest in taking down the infrastructure.
However, Carlin decided to remain silent on the issue that the cyber attack was sponsored by Russian Cyber Army Fancy Bear.
In 2016, FBI and CIA have already alerted the public and private organizations working in the whole of the United States of a possible cyber attack. The law enforcement agencies asked the businesses to come up with proactive measures as soon as possible to stay safe and secure in the digital world.
Let’s hope, the recent cyber war launched on two US airlines acts as a lesson to other businesses that are still lenient when it comes to cyber security.
