COPENHAGEN: Cybercriminals paralysed the website of Copenhagen airport on Sunday with what airport officials described on their Facebook page as a "massive hacker attack."

Passengers flying into or from the Danish capital were asked to instead use a smartphone app to get updates on their flights after the website was forced offline by what Danish news agency Ritzau reported was a denial of service attack.

The reason for the attack was not clear, although hackers with political motives often use so-called denial of service attacks to take websites offline for a short period of time by overwhelming the platform with a massive number of requests.

Late on Sunday, the website was loading with a message that it was "temporarily unavailable," and redirected visitors to its profile on social media platform X.

In another Facebook post, the municipality of Thisted in north-west Denmark reported that an attack that had also paralysed its website. Thisted is home to a small airport.

Danish broadcaster TV Midtvest quoted local officials as saying that Russian hackers are suspected of being behind the attack on the municipality's website. Police suspect the airport may have been the actual target of the large-scale attack.

"I don't think they realise how small this airport is," TV Midtvest quoted the municipality's spokesman as saying. It was not initially known who might be behind the attack on the airport in Copenhagen.

 - dpa