Australian airline Qantas yesterday said that data from 5.7 million customers stolen in a major cyberattack this year had been shared online, part of a leak affecting dozens of firms.
Disney, Google, IKEA, Toyota, McDonald’s and fellow airlines Air France and KLM are also reported to have had data stolen in a cyberattack targeting software firm Salesforce, with the information now being held for ransom.
Qantas confirmed in July that hackers had targeted one of its customer contact centers, breaching a computer system used by a third party now known to have been Salesforce.
Photo: AFP
They secured access to sensitive information such as customer names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers and birthdays, Qantas said.
No further breaches have taken place since and the company is cooperating with Australian security services.
“Qantas is one of a number of companies globally that has had data released by cyber criminals following the airline’s cyber incident in early July, where customer data was stolen via a third party platform,” the company.
Most of the data leaked was names, e-mail addresses and frequent flyer details, but some also included customers’ “business or home address, date of birth, phone number, gender and meal preferences,” it said.
“No credit card details, personal financial information or passport details were impacted,” Qantas said.
It also said it had obtained a legal injunction with the Supreme Court to prevent the stolen data being “accessed, viewed, released, used, transmitted or published.”
Cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt said that would do little to prevent the spread of the data.
“It’s frankly ridiculous,” he said. “It obviously doesn’t stop criminals at all anywhere, and it also really doesn’t have any effect on people outside of Australia.”
Cybersecurity analysts have linked the hack to people with ties to an alliance of cybercriminals called Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters.
Research group Unit 42 said in a note the group had “asserted responsibility for laying siege to customer Salesforce tenants as part of a coordinated effort to steal data and hold it for ransom.”
The deadline for the ransom payment was reportedly on Friday.
The hack of data from Australia’s biggest airline comes as a string of major cyberattacks in the country has raised concerns about the protection of personal data.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
DEATH SENTENCE: The ousted leader said she was willing to attend a fresh trial outside Bangladesh where the ruling would not be a ‘foregone conclusion’ Bangladesh’s fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called the guilty verdict and death sentence in her crimes against humanity trial “biased and politically motivated.” Hasina, 78, defied court orders that she return from India to attend her trial about whether she ordered a deadly crackdown against the student-led uprising that ousted her. She was found guilty and sentenced to death earlier yesterday. “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate,” Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India. “They are biased and politically motivated,” she
RSS