Jul
22
Virgin America launched their ticket sales this past Thursday through their website and customer service number. I visited their website to come to find out it was extremely slow and unresponsive. I found this very unusual especially for their first day of selling tickets. Well after reading the news, I found out the day their site launched and customer service was hit by hacker. It crippled their site for most of the day, but the day after it was functioning normally.
Well, the big question I have is ‘Was this really a hacker’? Or was VA quick to blame their mistakes elsewhere for possibly being unprepared for their overwhelming surge of traffic to buy tickets? The IT department over at VA and some higher management folks are probably the only ones that really know. Now if this was a hacker, why would they want to paralyze the start of Virgin America? Many of the airlines in the US already were against the startup of VA. From the AP:
Several major U.S. airlines, including American, Delta Air Lines and Continental Airlines, tried to block Virgin America from entering the market. The airlines argued that Virgin America’s ties to Branson violated federal laws capping foreign control of a U.S. airline at 25%.
The airline will be starting from their home base of San Francisco to New York, Las Angeles, Las Vegas, and Washington DC later in the year. Their first flight will be sometime in August.
Now its your turn to talk. Have you bought a ticket yet on Virgin America?
Watch the Video on the Virgin America Hacker
It could be a bad setup on their website, a programming bug… or the other airline companies paying hackers to attack them and bring the website down/slow. On today’s business world I wouldn’t doubt it.
It could be a “cracker for hire” type. Based on the description, the attack seems to be a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) type of attack. It’s not difficult to launch this kind of attack. A minimum of around a hundred compromised computers, also known as zombies could be enough to cripple a company’s Web site. The attack can be as easy as “point-and-click”.
If the payment is hefty, then crackers won’t think twice in performing these kinds of attacks. I don’t think the company’s hardware setup isn’t enough for a sudden surge in traffic. Airline companies like Virgin America should have already expected that. What they obviously lacked is security in their systems.
Agreed Gabriel.