Millions of Passengers Data Compromised After Cathay Pacific Hacked

Millions of Passengers Data Compromised After Cathay Pacific Hacked. Cathay Pacific, the worlds 10th largest airline in terms of sales, and one of Asia’s top airlines have uncovered a data breached in which over 9 million passengers information has been stolen.

On Wednesday 14 October the airline admitted that a range of data has been stolen from over 9 million passengers. This data includes names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email address and even passport numbers. The hack occurred earlier this year.

The airline first discovered “suspicious activity” on its network in March this year, and immediately enlisted the help of a cybersecurity company to help investigate the activity and get to the bottom of what happened. The investigation was underway from March, and by May the company were aware that passengers personal data had been stolen as part of the activity. Since May Cathay Pacific have been analyzing the results from the investigation to inform the passengers who were affected and to what extent they were affected.

It is estimated that 860,000 passport numbers and 245,000 Hong Kong identity numbers were stolen as part of the attack.

Cathay Pacific has said that there is no evidence that this stolen data has been misused by the hackers. It added detail around the card numbers, saying 27 credit card numbers were breached, but the hackers had no access to the cards security codes. They also stole 403 expired credit card numbers.

CEO Rupert Hogg said:  We are very sorry for any concern this data security event may cause our passengers 

Cathay Pacific are feeling the consequences of this attack, with their shares falling by 5% today following yesterday’s disclosure.

This news comes after another data breach hitting the airline industry last month when British Airways stated attackers stole the card payment details of 380,000 customers.