Air India said the incident has affected around 45 lakh customers registered between 26th August 2011 and 3rd February 2021.
Air India has announced that in a massive cyber-attack on its data processor in February, ten years’ worth of Air India customer data including credit cards, passports and phone numbers have been leaked.
Air India, disclosing the scale of the breach nearly three months after it was first informed of it, said the incident has affected around 45 lakh customers registered between 26th August 2011 and 3rd February 2021.
In the ‘highly sophisticated’ attack that targeted Geneva-based passenger system operator SITA that serves the Star Alliance of airlines including Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and United besides Air India, Names, date of birth, contact information and ticket information have also been compromised.
In an email to customers, Air India said: “SITA PSS our data processor of the passenger service system (which is responsible for storing and processing of personal information of the passengers) had recently been subjected to a cybersecurity attack leading to personal data leak of certain passengers. This incident affected around 4,500,000 data subjects in the world.”
“While we had received the first notification in this regard from our data processor on 25.02.2021, we would like to clarify that the identity of the affected data subjects was only provided to us by our data processor on 25.03.2021 and 5.04.2021,” it added.
“The breach involved personal data registered between 26th August 2011 and 3rd February 2021, with details that included name, date of birth, contact information, passport information, ticket information, Star Alliance and Air India frequent flyer data (but no passwords data were affected) as well as credit cards data. However, in respect of this last type of data, CVV/CVC numbers are not held by our data processor,” the airline clarified.
Air India data breached in a major Cyber attack. Breach involves Passengers personal Information including Credit Card Info and Passport Details. Other Global Airlines are likely affected too.#airindia #CyberAttack @airindiain@rahulkanwal @sanket @maryashakil pic.twitter.com/XxUORgInJQ
— Jiten Jain (@jiten_jain) May 21, 2021
It had launched an investigation into the incident and took steps including securing the compromised servers, engaging external specialists of data security incidents, contacting credit card issuers and resetting passwords of its frequent flyer programme, Air India said.
“While we and our data processor continue to take remedial actions…We would also encourage passengers to change passwords wherever applicable to ensure safety of their personal data,” it said.
As an independent media platform, we do not take advertisements from governments and corporate houses. It is you, our readers, who have supported us on our journey to do honest and unbiased journalism. Please contribute, so that we can continue to do the same in future.
