SAS Airlines knocked offline in second Valentine's Day cyber attack targeting Sweden


SAS airlines website and mobile app are knocked offline by hackers Tuesday evening, customer data has been reported compromised. It's the second attack targeting Sweden on Valentine's Day.

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) was hit by a cyberattack Tuesday evening, knocking its website offline and leaking customer data from its mobile app.

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"We aren't able to say a lot more right now as we are right in the attack right now," said SAS spokesperson Karin Nyman.

Nyman urged customers to stay off the SAS website and app until they can remedy the attack – although Nyman also told Reuters that the app has been fixed.

As of 430pm EST (930pm GMT), the Cybernews team found the SAS website home page was loading properly, but when we tried to search and book a flight, the website returned only HTML language instead of normal search results.

SAS HTML

Other news organizations in Sweden and Norway also had difficulty using the SAS app.

TT, a national news agency in Sweden, reported customers who tried to log into the SAS app were logged onto the wrong accounts and had access to personal details of other people.

This is not the first cyber attack on Swedish companies in the past few weeks, and the second to happen on Valentine's Day.

Sweden's national public television broadcaster, SVT, was also taken offline temporarily Tuesday.

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“A group calling themselves "Anonymous Sudan" is taking responsibility for the attacks and refers to the Koran burnings in Sweden,” SVT said in a statement on their website.

On Monday evening, the group had warned they would attack Sweden in a 'Happy Valentine's Day' Telegram post.

SVT post
Image by Swedish Television broadcasting company

Security experts who spoke with SVT believe the attack “may in fact be a Russian campaign under a false flag.”

Last week various Swedish healthcare agencies were also hacked. "Anonymous Sudan" claimed responsibility for those attacks.

No word yet if the group is behind the attack on SAS. Cybernews will follow the story.