Personal data of 4.5 million Air India passengers leaked in cyberattack on SITA
The extent of the damage from the attack on the air transportation data giant in February continues to become clearer
Mandi Kogosowski
| 23/05/2021
Photo from the Air India website
The extent of the damage from the cyberattack on global air transportation data giant SITA in February continues to become clearer. Over the weekend, Air India, the national airline of India, announced that there had been a leak of personal data of 4.5 million passengers who used the airline's services during almost a decade, from August 2011 until February 2021, including names, contact information, credit card and passport information, flight data and more, but passwords and credit card verification codes were not compromised.
In March, SITA announced that a month earlier it fell victim to a sophisticated cyberattack that lasted 22 days, and that certain data related to passengers from various airlines belonging to the Star Alliance were leaked. In its announcement on Friday, Air India, which belongs to the alliance, emphasized that SITA confirmed that no unusual activity was observed following the identification of the breach and the resecuring of the servers that were compromised.
SITA did not release specific data regarding airlines that were compromised from the attack, and only agreed to say that it had contacted various members of the alliance including Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, Finnair and Malaysia Airlines. The Techcrunch website pointed out that SITA is one of the only companies in the market supplying reservation and ticketing services to airlines. Two of SITA's local members have also been compromised in recent years. In 2017, a breach of the hotel reservation system of Sabra Tours led to the exposure of over a million credit cards. In 2019, a vulnerability was found in the reservation system of another company, Amadeus, which made it easier to access customer records and make changes.
The extent of the damage from the attack on the air transportation data giant in February continues to become clearer
Photo from the Air India website
The extent of the damage from the cyberattack on global air transportation data giant SITA in February continues to become clearer. Over the weekend, Air India, the national airline of India, announced that there had been a leak of personal data of 4.5 million passengers who used the airline's services during almost a decade, from August 2011 until February 2021, including names, contact information, credit card and passport information, flight data and more, but passwords and credit card verification codes were not compromised.
In March, SITA announced that a month earlier it fell victim to a sophisticated cyberattack that lasted 22 days, and that certain data related to passengers from various airlines belonging to the Star Alliance were leaked. In its announcement on Friday, Air India, which belongs to the alliance, emphasized that SITA confirmed that no unusual activity was observed following the identification of the breach and the resecuring of the servers that were compromised.
SITA did not release specific data regarding airlines that were compromised from the attack, and only agreed to say that it had contacted various members of the alliance including Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, Finnair and Malaysia Airlines. The Techcrunch website pointed out that SITA is one of the only companies in the market supplying reservation and ticketing services to airlines. Two of SITA's local members have also been compromised in recent years. In 2017, a breach of the hotel reservation system of Sabra Tours led to the exposure of over a million credit cards. In 2019, a vulnerability was found in the reservation system of another company, Amadeus, which made it easier to access customer records and make changes.
