Asian Airlines Report Customer Data Breaches After Attack on IT Provider Amadeus

Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Korean Air, Asiana Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines have all reported data breaches over the past week. Each has been traced back to Amadeus IT Group, a Spanish company that builds and maintains flight reservation, ticketing and check-in platforms. Amadeus said it recently became aware of a vulnerability affecting a travel booking display environment, and that certain booking-display data was accessible. It said there is no evidence that payment or financial data was accessed, and no indication the vulnerability was exploited for ransomware. It has fixed the issue and added monitoring, but declined to say how many victims were affected.

The airlines have shared some figures. Japan Airlines said 92,000 customers had information stolen, Cathay Pacific reported 53,000 records, and Singapore Airlines reported 46,000. Exposed details included booking numbers, passenger names and flight details. Some Cathay Pacific records also held passport and travel document details, frequent flyer numbers and email addresses. Cathay Pacific said Amadeus told it the attackers used login credentials assigned to its system account. All the airlines said their own systems and operations were not affected.

Singapore Airlines said it would contact customers with upcoming flights so they can change their exposed booking numbers, and urged people to be wary of malicious emails.