Enlarge image
Counter at Düsseldorf Airport: There were only problems online
Photo: Federico Gambarini / dpa
Anyone who wanted to find out more on the Düsseldorf Airport website on Thursday morning was temporarily only shown a white page without any content.
The websites of the airports in Hanover, Dortmund, Erfurt, Nuremberg and Baden-Baden were also temporarily unavailable.
Of the airports affected, Düsseldorf Airport is by far the largest, handling the fourth most passengers in Germany each year.
The failure was probably based on a so-called DDoS attack.
These are technically relatively trivial overload attacks that do not steal any data or damage any infrastructure.
The attacks are relatively easy to execute, but also easy to defend against.
A Russian hacktivist group claimed responsibility for the attack online.
Flights according to plan
Flight operations were not disrupted at any time.
Passengers could continue to find out about arrivals and departures online via the airport apps.
A spokesman for Düsseldorf Airport confirmed the problems when asked by SPIEGEL.
»The cause of the disruption has not yet been conclusively determined, the analyzes by our IT partners are still ongoing.«
The outage lasted little more than an hour at most airports, and the airports in Düsseldorf and Hanover could be reached again shortly before 10 a.m.
On Wednesday there were flight cancellations and delays at Lufthansa due to a global IT glitch.
In the morning, the computer systems for boarding, among other things, were not operational.
The problems in this case were apparently caused by an excavator that accidentally cut fiber optic cables during construction work.
Thousands of passengers were affected.
Operations at Frankfurt Airport resumed as normal on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the operating company Fraport.
There are only minor delays because of the fog.
On Friday, numerous flight cancellations are threatened nationwide.
The Ver.di union has called for a day-long warning strike at most major airports in Germany.
hpp/dpa
