Anonymous Sudan doubles ransom demand to $3m as SAS struggles to restore operations

Self-proclaimed hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan has doubled its ransom demand made to Scandinavian airline SAS to as much as $3 million after the airline refused to engage with it.

The hacktivist group claims it targeted Scandinavian airline SAS earlier this month, knocking the airline’s website and applications offline. The attack occurred less than six months after a similar cyber attack affected the airline’s operations.

The security incident came to light when SAS customers started complaining on social media that they were unable to visit the airline’s website and carry out necessary tasks before boarding their flights.

Anonymous Sudan last week claimed responsibility for the cyber attack on SAS and listed the airline as a victim on its Telegram channel. “We were bored and we missed Sweden and we missed Scandinavian Airlines so we dropped the SAS app and website,” the group wrote in a post uploaded on May 24 on its Telegram channel. The group continued to publish fresh posts, mostly mocking the airline.

“Let us play a beautiful game with you, SAS company. You previously tried to repel the attack and were unable, and this is the second strike that we proved to you that we can. What do you think we tell you how to repel the attack for $3,500? Or blackmail you and take $3,500 to stop the attack? Otherwise we will continue the attack and will leak something you will not like,” another post read.

Last week, Anonymous Sudan increased the ransom amount to $175,000 as the airline did not meet the hacker group’s demand and said it will continue to increase the ransom amount and keep the airline’s services down till it pays up.

The hacktivist group on Tuesday hiked the ransom demand to $3,000,000, stating that it will continue to increase the ransom figure until the airline accepts its demand.

"We are here to teach you a lesson of caring about your customers, we will continue attacking you and increase the intensity more, as we said before this doesn’t make a difference for us, we simply attack and you get harmed," Anonymous Sudan said in a Telegram post.

"We have increased the ransom to 3 million US dollars. Expect this to keep increasing more and more. We will keep punishing you and your company non-stop as we have been doing for the past 120 hours, continue acting lost, it will end bad for you and we won’t be harmed."

Several SAS customers took to social media to express anger and disappointment about automatic ticket cancellations, rebookings, missing bookings, missing pieces of baggage, and other disruptions. The airline mostly directed these customers to its customer service or its live chat, though the chatbot wasn’t able to provide much help.

After almost five days of being offline, SAS’s website is finally up and running. It is not clear if the company worked to get the website running or it paid the ransom demanded by Anonymous Sudan.

Anonymous Sudan first targeted the airline in February and knocked its website down, stating that the burning of the Qur’an during a January protest in Stockholm motivated them to target Swedish organisations.