Asiana Airlines website hacked and defaced by militant group
Asiana Airlines website flyasiana.com was briefly hacked and defaced in a domain name system attack, according to the company. The attack affected the site for several hours, with an anti-Albanian message being posted by a Serbian militant group. The hackers signed themselves Kuroi’SH and Prosox. A spokesperson for Asiana Airlines, South Korea’s second-largest carrier, confirmed no personal data had been stolen during the hack. Last year, the company exposed customer passport information and flight records on its site.

The website of Korea’s second-largest carrier was hacked early Monday morning, temporarily sending users to a different webpage.



According to Asiana Airlines, its website flyasiana.com suffered a Domain Name System attack around 4:35 a.m. on Monday.



Users who attempted to access the site were sent to an image screen depicting men in masks and a hateful message about the feud between Serbians and Albanians, as well as the Newborn Monument in Pristina, Kosovo, which was created to commemorate Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia.





“I am sorry Asiana Airlines, but the world needs to understand the crime against humanity, carried out by Albanian pigs touching Serbia,” a portion of the message read.A spokesman for the airline said that the airline recognized the attack “right away” and began restoring the original website at around 5:30 a.m.The company said through a statement that there were “no problems” with Asiana‘s internal system and data stored on the site, meaning that the attack was likely a simple defacement, a form of online vandalism sometimes utilized by “hacktivists.”“Representatives from the Korea Internet & Security Agency have already visited our offices, and they are currently looking into the problem at our DNS hosting company,” the spokesman said.By late morning Monday, Asiana’s website was back up and running normally.The hackers who created this disturbance, or defacement, signed their work “Kuroi’SH” and “Prosox.” Prosox left a tweet mentioning the hack, saying “404 Plane Not Found for Asiana Airlines” around the time of the attack. In the past, the hacker name Kuroi’SH has been linked to similar defacements of other sites, including Google Brazil.Although Asiana Airlines said no personal data was stolen through the hack, the incident is yet another blemish on the airline’s online security record.Last year, Asiana came under fire when it was revealed it had left some uploaded customer documents vulnerable on its website, including passport information and flight records.By Won Ho-jung ( hjwon@heraldcorp.com