One of the most popular flight tracking websites in the world has been forced offline after a series of “sustained” cyber attacks. In a series of Tweets, Flightradar24 told followers that the third attack in just two days had crashed the website for at least 10 hours as engineers scrambled to “mitigate” the attack and get the service back up and running.
“For the third time in two days, Flightradar24 is under attack. Our engineers are working to mitigate the attack as quickly as possible and we hope to be backtracking flights soon. We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience. Updates to follow in thread,” the service said on Monday night.
The service remained unavailable on Tuesday morning. “Attacks on our systems continue and while we were able to bring services back for a short time, significant instability due to the sustained attacks has forced us to refocus our efforts to mitigate them,” a later update explained.
It was not immediately clear why Flightradar24 was subject to a cyberattack but the website reassured visitors that private information was safe. The website sales subscription plans that unlock more detailed information about flights.
Flightradar24 wasn’t able to provide an estimate on when the website would be back up and running.
In a normal day, Flightradar24 claims to welcome over two million users and has proved incredibly popular even after the COVID-19 pandemic grounded flights worldwide. The site is often used to track high-profile flights and to provide early information after a crash.
