Australian airline Qantas is contacting customers after a cyber attack compromised personal information for millions of travellers.
On Monday (30 June), “unusual activity” was detected on a third-party platform used by a Qantas airline contact centre.
According to the airline, a cyber criminal targeted the call centre to steal data including the names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and frequent flyer numbers of up to six million Qantas customers.
Once the data breach had been detected, Qantas “took immediate steps and contained the incident”, said a statement on Wednesday.
It assured customers that credit card details, personal financial information and passport details were not held in the breached system, with no frequent flyer accounts, passwords or login details compromised.
“We are continuing to investigate the proportion of the data that has been stolen, though we expect it will be significant,” Qantas said.
The Australian flag carrier said it is currently contacting customers to “make them aware of the incident, apologise and provide details on the support available”.
Qantas Group CEO Vanessa Hudson said: “We sincerely apologise to our customers and we recognise the uncertainty this will cause.”
Qantas has notified the Australian Cyber Security Centre, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Australian Federal Police of the data hack.
It added that “additional security measures” will be introduced to “strengthen system monitoring”.
Qantas said in a statement: “We want to reassure all of our customers that there is no impact to Qantas’ operations or the safety of our airline.
“We sincerely apologise for this incident and recognise the uncertainty it may cause. Our customers trust us with their personal information, and we take that responsibility seriously.”
Separately, the FBI issued an alert on Friday (27 June) about a notorious cybercriminal group following a string of cyber attacks on US airlines.
WestJet and Hawaiian Airlines have both recently been victims of cyberattacks.
The FBI singled out Scattered Spider in an alert Friday, in which the bureau said the group was “expanding its targeting to include the airline sector”.
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