New Delhi, May 22, 2021: The servers of Air India were recently hacked, leading to the unethical access of personal information related to scores of passengers, the national carrier said in a statement issued on May 21.
The information stored on the passenger service system includes credit card and passport details. The cyberattack on Air India, according to the airline, has affected the data of around 45 lakh flyers around the world.
“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,” said the statement issued by Air India.
The airline, while admitting that details of credit card have also been breached, clarified that the CVV/CVC numbers – which are key to execute transactions – were not held by its data processor according to the reports published in moneycontrol.com.
“The breach involved personal data registered between 26th August 2011 and 20th 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,” Air India stated.
