Asian stocks rose in thin Boxing Day trade on Thursday, extending a “Santa Rally” with key markets Hong Kong and Sydney still shut for the holidays.Japan’s Nikkei index closed up 1.1 percent, boosted by comments from the Bank of Japan governor and share price gains for top-selling automaker Toyota.China’s plans for massive bond issuances in 2025 also bolstered investor sentiment.”Even though many in the region are still shaking off a bit of a holiday hangover, with several markets closed for Boxing Day, Asian stocks opened higher, riding a favourable wave from China’s financial bond juggernaut,” said Stephen Innes from SPI Asset Management.Shanghai, Bangkok and Taipei all edged up 0.1 percent, while Seoul lost 0.4 percent and Singapore shed 0.1 percent. Jakarta and Wellington were closed.London Stockton, an analyst at Ned Davis Research, noted that the “Santa Claus rally could still be alive, with strong seasonality into the end of the year”.Stock markets have traditionally fared well in the last five trading days of the year and the first two in the new year, a trend known as the “Santa Claus rally”. Among a number of possible reasons advanced by experts include the festive holiday mood and purchasing ahead of the end of the tax year.Innes said remarks from Bank of Japan governor Kazuo Ueda in which he refrained from signalling a potential interest rate hike next month also “influenced bullish regional sentiments”.Japanese market heavyweight Toyota ended nearly six percent higher after reports in the Nikkei business daily said it aimed to double its return on equity — a key measure of a company’s financial performance.In thin corporate news on Thursday, Japan Airlines reported a cyberattack that caused delays to domestic and international flights and prompted a temporary halt to ticket sales.However later in the day the carrier said its systems had been restored after the “large data attack”.Markets had been closed across Europe and North America for Christmas. Dow Jones closed up 0.9 percent on the eve, while the tech-heavy S&P 500 rallied 1.1 percent.Key figures around 0745 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.1 percent at 39,568.06 points (close)Hang Seng: UP 1.1 percent at 20,098.29 points (Tuesday close)Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.1 percent at 3,398.08 points (close)Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0397 from $1.0389 on WednesdayPound/dollar: DOWN at $1.2529 from $1.2531Dollar/yen: UP at 157.44 yen from 157.31 yenEuro/pound: UP at 82.97 pence from 82.89 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.13 percent at $70.19 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.11 percent at $73.69 per barrelNew York – Dow: UP 0.9 percent at 43,297.03 (Tuesday close)London – FTSE 100: UP 0.4 percent at 8.136.99 (Tuesday close)

Japan Airlines said its systems were up and running again after a cyberattack on Thursday caused delays to domestic and international flights.”We have identified the cause and scope of the malfunction, and the system has been restored,” said the airline, Japan’s second biggest after All Nippon Airways (ANA).The “large data attack” did not leak any customer information and safety was unaffected, Japan Airlines (JAL) said in a post on social media platform X. Japanese media said it may have been a so-called DDoS attack aimed at overwhelming and disrupting a website or server.Ticket sales for domestic and international flights departing on Thursday were suspended during the incident but have now resumed, JAL said.Although the cyberattack did not cause major disruption, the airline earlier said that 24 domestic flights had been delayed by more than half an hour.Problems with the carrier’s baggage check-in system caused delays at several Japanese airports, local media said.JAL shares fell as much as 2.5 percent in morning trade after the news emerged, before recovering. Its stocks were down 0.2 percent in the afternoon.- ‘Human error’ -Separately, a transport ministry committee tasked with probing a fatal January 2024 collision involving a JAL passenger jet released an interim report on Wednesday blaming human error for the incident that killed five people.The collision at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport was with a coast guard plane carrying six crew members — of whom five were killed — that was on a mission to deliver relief supplies to a quake-hit central region of Japan.According to the report, the smaller plane’s pilot mistook an air traffic control officer’s instructions to mean authorisation had been given to enter the runway.The captain was also “in a hurry” at the time because the coast guard plane’s departure was 40 minutes behind schedule, the report said.The traffic controller failed to notice the plane had intruded onto the runway, oblivious even to an alarm system warning against its presence.All 379 people on board the JAL Airbus escaped just before the aircraft was engulfed in flames.Japan Airlines is just the latest Japanese firm to be hit by a cyberattack.The country’s space agency JAXA was targeted in 2023, although no sensitive information about rockets or satellites was accessed.The same year one of Japan’s busiest ports was hit by a ransomware attack blamed on the Russia-based Lockbit group.In 2022, a cyberattack at a Toyota supplier forced the top-selling automaker to halt operations at domestic plants.And more recently, the popular Japanese video-sharing website Niconico came under a large cyberattack in June.