Malaysia Airlines hasn’t had the best of time in the past year, and the New Year hasn’t kicked off well either. The Malaysia Airlines website has been hacked by Lizard Squad, with a not so subtle message — “404-Plane not found.”
As mentioned above, Lizard Squad took responsibility for the hack, and the airline’s homepage now shows a photo of a reptile with the words, “Hacked by LIZARD SQUAD – OFFICIAL CYBER CALIPHATE.” The hackers have also warned that they would be “dumping some loot found on malaysiaairlines.com servers soon.”
Going to dump some loot found on http://t.co/D9XYneQoaK servers soon
— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) January 26, 2015
The Airlines has acknowledged the hack, and is redirecting users to a different URL for booking flight tickets.
You may experience difficulty accessing our website. We are currently working on resolving the issue. To book fares: http://t.co/tV2iIvlYxt
— Malaysia Airlines (@MAS) January 26, 2015
To check-in online, kindly visit http://t.co/eSWoAvFbge. We thank you for your patience and kind understanding.
— Malaysia Airlines (@MAS) January 26, 2015
The Airlines has also issued a statement about the situation.
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.
At this stage, Malaysia Airlines’ web servers are intact.
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.
Malaysia Airlines assures customers and clients that its website was not hacked and this temporary glitch does not affect their bookings and that user data remains secured.
The Lizard Squad recently came under the limelight when it took down Sony’s PlayStation Network and Microsoft’s Xbox Live on Christmas Eve. Not content with hacking websites, the hackers’ group is also selling the DDoS tool it used to bring down the networks. It can be bought by anyone wanting to bring down a website or network.
