‘The Risk Is Growing’: Cyber Warfare Threats Inadvertently Targeting Commercial Flights Surge Amid Global Wars

The number of cyber warfare incidents appearing to inadvertently target commercial airliners has spiked dramatically in recent months amid global wars and geopolitical tensions, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

To deter drone or missile attacks, militaries involved in wars often engage in GPS spoofing to jam or disrupt aerial weapons — a tactic that has been utilized in the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Europe. But these disruptive attacks have spilled past those regions and started to hamstring U.S. and other airliners, causing panic and confusion while planes are airborne, aviation and regulatory officials told the WSJ.

The attacks, which began roughly a year ago, affected over 1,100 flights in August, compared to only a few dozen in February, according to research from SkAI Data Services and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, as cited by the WSJ.

“The risk is growing in terms of the number of occurrences,” Florian Guillermet, executive director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, told the WSJ.

Most of the cyber jams are emanating from the Middle East and Europe, both of which are currently embroiled in conflict amid the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, according to the WSJ.

The Russia-Ukraine war began in 2022 and has shown no signs of stopping, instead pulling the U.S. and the West further into the conflict in their support of Kyiv’s defenses.