Hundreds of SpiceJet airlines passengers were stranded at various airports in India due to a ransomware attack that impacted the morning flight departures on Wednesday.
SpiceJet is an Indian low-cost airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana. It is the second-largest airline in the country by the number of domestic passengers carried.
Confirming the development, a spokesperson informed that a ransomware attack on Tuesday night had slowed down the departure of flights on Wednesday morning.
“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 said in a Twitter post after getting queries over the delay in departure.
Meanwhile, as the passengers stuck at airports raised concerns over the delay the ground staff informed them that ‘the server was down, according to reports.
One of the passengers, Saurabh Airi tweeted “At the airport since 5 AM, no proactive notifications for the delay when the attack attempt was detected at night.”
There has been an alarming rise in ransomware breaches globally, including in India, which increased by 13 per cent in the past year, representing a jump greater than the past 5 years combined according to the “Verizon Business 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report (2022 DBIR)”.
The report analysed 23,896 security incidents, of which 5,212 were confirmed breaches.
Heightened geopolitical tensions are driving increased sophistication, visibility, and awareness around nation-state affiliated cyber-attacks.
