Alaska Airlines deals with hacker attack

Airline Industry Information, March 9, 2000

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2000 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Alaska Airlines has revealed that it recently had to spend more than one hour responding to a hacker attack on its web site.

The airline likened the 29 February incident to a game of chess where airline web technicians were required to keep one step ahead of the hacker, who caused damage to the home page and the page dedicated to providing information about the crash of Alaska Airlines flight 261 on 31 January 2000.

The hacker was apparently able to get into the site after web site administrators shut off their counter to enable visitors to gain speedier access to the site following the crash of flight 261, as well as the movement of several parts of the web site to different web servers to enable the site to cope with increased visitor volume according to Dow Jones.

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