The world’s most popular flight-tracking website and app is facing an ongoing cyber attack that has affected the ability of millions of users to look up flights and other aviation stats.
Flight Radar 24 tracks as many as 200,000 flights globally every single day, displaying them in real-time using ADS-B data from a massive network of more than 40,000 receivers around the world.
The website and its accompanying app have proven incredibly popular, not only with aviation buffs but also the wider public, who have often turned to Flight Radar 24 to watch in real-time flights around the world.
Flight Radar 24 has also turned into a trusted source of aviation data in the wake of major airline accidents, such as the tragic collision between a Blackhawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet on final approach to Washington National Airport in January.
But on Wednesday, Flight Radar 24 announced that it was fighting a so-called ‘Distributed Denial-of-Service’ (DDoS) attack in which cyber criminals deliberately flood their target with fake traffic in a bid to slow the website down or cause it to crash altogether.
In a post on its official X account on Wednesday, Flight Radar 24 said the attack had been ongoing for more than 14 hours and had caused a variety of issues for users.
The website has activated a special system from cyber security company Cloudflare in a bid to stop the cyber attack, and Flight Radar 24 says its online services are “gradually getting back to normal.”
Originally started as a hobby project by two self-proclaimed aviation geeks from Sweden, Flight Radar 24 has grown to become the number 1 downloaded flight tracking app in both the Apple App Store and Google Play store, with more than 75 million downloads.
Flight Radar 24 got its big break in 2010 when Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted, and the resulting ash cloud upended travel plans, driving a massive spike in visits to the flight tracking website.
Since then, the website still sees a big surge in traffic during significant events, especially when VIPs like the Pope are known to be traveling on a specific flight.
