The website of the world’s busiest airport was restored by about 10:17 a.m.
The outage did not affect airport operations, according to an airport spokesman. Some travelers use Hartsfield-Jackson’s website for information on airport parking lots and concessions, along with links to security wait times and other resources.
Some other U.S. airport websites were also down early Monday morning, including Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, St Louis Lambert International Airport, Colorado Springs Airport, Ontario International Airport in California and Honolulu International Airport.
The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency issued an alert earlier this year saying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could expose organizations to increased malicious cyber activity. It said Killnet, a pro-Russian hacking group, claimed credit for carrying out a cyber attack against a U.S. airport in March 2022 in response to U.S. support for Ukraine.
On Monday, Killnet listed multiple airport websites in the U.S. as targets, according to reports.
Hartsfield- Jackson said it is investigating the cause of the incident. “We’re looking into it,” said airport spokesman Andrew Gobeil.
Such cyber attacks known as “distributed denial-of-service” attacks against websites “are notoriously easy and cheap to perform and more difficult to stop,” according to cybersecurity expert Roger Grimes.
The City of Atlanta was hit by a cyber attack in 2018. At the time Hartsfield- Jackson, which is owned and operated by the City of Atlanta, responded by temporarily shutting down its Wi-Fi and turning off tools on its website such as flight information and security wait times.
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