Air India's servers hacked, data of 45 lakh passengers including credit cards leaked

NEW DELHI: Air India, India's national carrier has suffered a major cyber attack in which the personal details of around 45 lakh passengers have been leaked.

The breach involved the data between August 2011 and February 2021.

The cyber-attack on Air India's data processor in February has breached ten years' worth of customer data, including credit cards, passports, and phone numbers, the airline informed.

Air India announced the scale of the breach nearly three months after it was first told of it, affecting about 45 lakh customers who registered between August 26, 2011, and February 3, 2021.

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The 'incredibly robust' attack, which targeted Geneva-based passenger system operator SITA, which serves the Star Alliance of airlines, including Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, and United, as well as Air India, leaked names, dates of birth, contact details, and ticket information.

In a mail, Air India said, "This is to inform you that 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."

Read the full email here:

An investigation into the incident is underway and it also had taken measures such as securing the compromised servers, consulting external data protection incident experts, contacting credit card issuers, and resetting frequent flyer programme passwords.

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