German airport websites hit by suspected cyberattack

(Reuters) — The websites of seven German airports were hit by a suspected cyberattack Thursday, the ADV airport association said, a day after a major IT failure at Lufthansa left thousands of passengers stranded.

Among the airports affected were Dusseldorf, Nuremberg and Dortmund, but websites for Germany's biggest airports in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin were operating normally.

“Once again, airports fell victim to large-scale DDoS attacks,” ADV CEO Ralph Beisel said in a statement.

A DDoS (denial-of-service) attack involves high volumes of internet traffic being directed to targeted servers in a relatively unsophisticated bid by so-called “hacktivists” to knock them offline.

“According to the information we have so far, other systems are not affected,” Mr. Beisel said, adding the extent to which the situation will spread to other locations remains to be seen.