Confirming the development, a SpiceJet spokesperson said that a ransomware attack on Tuesday night slowed down the flight departures this morning. After SpiceJet received multiple queries on the delay in departure, the company tweeted, (Translated) “Some SpiceJet systems suffered a ransomware attack last night, which affected and slowed down this morning’s flight. Our IT team The situation has been brought under control and the flights are operating normally.”
#ImportantUpdate: Certain SpiceJet systems faced an attempted ransomware attack last night that impacted and slowed down morning flight departures today. Our IT team has contained and rectified the situation and flights are operating normally now.
— SpiceJet (@flyspicejet) May 25, 2022
Meanwhile, as soon as passengers stranded at the airport complained of delays, the ground staff informed them that the ‘server is down’. Renu Tilwani, one of the passengers, tweeted that a flight to Bengaluru, which was supposed to take off at 9.30 am, will now take off at 1.30 pm. However, officials are not giving details about the technical snag, saying they are unable to track down the incident.
In 2020, SpiceJet was reportedly hit by a security flaw that exposed the personal information of over 1.2 million passengers, including flight details. This information is said to have been found in an unencrypted database file when a security researcher accessed a SpiceJet system by brute forcing the password.
The flight to Bangalore was scheduled to depart at 9.30 am but its estimated to depart at 1.30 pm.The official statement of spicejet airlines said,’They are not able to track .’ Not providing other details regarding the technical glitch.@JM_Scindia @aai_gwalior@flyspicejet
— Renu Tilwani (@124blessedsoul) May 25, 2022
As reported by TechCrunch, this security breach was carried out by a security researcher who has not been named by the publication, as he violated US computer hacking laws. The report claimed that the researcher used brute force method to hack SpiceJet’s system. For those who do not know, let them know that this is a method in which hundreds of random passwords are played on the system and the correct password is guessed. The system had an unencrypted backup file with personal information of more than 1.2 million passengers as of last month, including vital information such as name, phone number, email address, date of birth and flight information.<!–
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