British Airways hacked: customer credit card, personal data stolen

[LemmingOverlrd]

What just happened? One of the world's largest airlines, British Airways, was hacked by cybercriminals. It is now in damage control mode, contacting affected customers, offering compensation and carrying out internal investigations to understand how it happened.

The British flag carrier has owned up to being hacked by criminal elements, and "personal and financial data" of up to 380,000 customers being stolen.

In a public statement released through the airline's channels, British Airways has admitted that during the period of August 21st to September 5th, its website and mobile app were compromised and that detailed personal and credit card data had been stolen. The company said, however, that passport numbers had not been taken. Those affected can expect a call from the company telling them their data was lost and they should contact their banks and follow advice. Alex Cruz, BA's chairman has apologized for the disruption and said the company was "deeply sorry." He described the intrusion as having "very sophisticated efforts"

BA has, so far, not detailed the means by which the hackers gained access to the customer data. Describing the attack, the company said: “It was having access to our systems in an illicit way, it was very sophisticated.”

Although BA promptly offered to compensate customers in case of losses (with customers having to trigger the process), the stolen data is more than enough to carry out online transactions and the company stands to take on huge losses.

To make matters worse, if BA is verified not to have taken appropriate measures to secure customer data, it can face a fine of up to $650 million due to the infamous GDPR regulation in place.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/76321-british-airways-hacked-customer-credit-card-personal-data.html

 

[stewi0001]

I give them props for coming out about it. Also, I love how proper sounding the British are. XD

 

[Danny101]

Has anyone ever wondered that they're just hacking themselves to sell data? Is it that farfetch?

 

[picka]

Has anyone ever wondered that they're just hacking themselves to sell data? Is it that farfetch?

If they did that would be a waste of time, unless they put there terms and conditions and privacy in a customer friendly fashion then maybe. Yes it's possible but its very risky letting others know about and letting the fbi and peeps investigate. They would have to do something very complicated to work, but it isn't far fetched.

But since now days google is getting hacked a lot with 256 bit encryption and more then its safe to say this seems legit.

When have Google ever been hacked?

 

[Reehahs]

Whatever they will say shall not fly after this hack.

 

[Danny101]

When have Google ever been hacked?

Yeah really, how has Google not been hacked?

 

[Abraka]

Because Google hacks everyone else.

 

[Abraka]

Stolen info is bad. But it won't kill anyone.

What's much worse is that Boeing airliners can be hacked remotely and controlled by overriding pilot inputs. Someone can basically crash an airliner and it will look like an accident or pilot error. In fact, several airplane accidents, including Malaysia 370, were most likely performed by remote control, but were wrongly (or deliberately) attributed to pilot suicides.

No ordinary hacker can maintain contact with the airplane for thousands of miles, especially not over the ocean. So it's pretty clear that MH-370 wasn't hacked by some teenage geek. It had to be someone who could follow the airplane, or someone with the access to airplane's satellite connection. Boeing airplanes most likely have a built-in backdoor for such purposes. Manufacturers have already added backdoors for operating systems, cellphones, modems, routers, web browsers, etc. but now they are going one step forward and adding them to drive-by-wire cars and fly-by-wire airplanes. Great, ha?