Malaysian Airlines website recovers from hack

Hacking

Malaysian Airlines has restored its website after a hacking group, claiming to be the Lizard Squad, attacked the site, bringing it down on Sunday.

The website was carrying the message, "404 plane not found", referring to the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared last year with 239 people onboard.

The message continued, "Hacked by LIZARD SQUAD OFFICIAL CYBER CALIPHATE", but when the message was first uncovered, it featured a banner at the top saying, "ISIS will prevail". However, it was reportedly changed to "Lizard Squad will prevail" later on.

The hacking group tweeted after it had taken the website down, "Going to dump some loot found on http://www.malaysiaairlines.com/ servers soon", followed by "More to come soon. Side note: We're still organizing the @MAS email dump, stay tuned for that," this morning.

Malaysia Airlines denied any data had been stolen, saying it was a temporary glitch and was being investigated Malaysia's transport ministry and Internet security agency.

However, the company did admit its domain name system had been compromised and it would take up to 22 hours to restore the website, which has now happened.

The company said in a statement after the hack: "Malaysia Airlines confirms that its Domain Name System (DNS) has been compromised where users are re-directed to a hacker website when www.malaysiaairlines.com URL is keyed in.

"The airline has resolved the issue with its service provider and the system is expected to be fully recovered within 22 hours. The matter has also been immediately reported to CyberSecurity Malaysia and the Ministry of Transport."

Last week, the Lizard Squad's registered database was leaked on the web after another group decided to attack its Lizard Stresser rent-a-botnet service. Details of its 14,241 registered users were leaked.

Clare Hopping
Freelance writer

Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.