Qantas Becomes Latest Victim of a Cyberattack

Just a few days after the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned that a cybercriminal organization called Scatter Spider was now targeting airlines, with Hawaiian Airlines and WestJet new victims, Australian air carrier Qantas shared the news that it has become the latest victim of a cyberattack. 

While it hasn’t been attributed to Scattered Spider, Qantas shared that the attack occurred in a third-party “contact center,” which holds customer data including names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and frequent fly numbers. Our sister publication Travel Weekly reports that an estimated 6 million travelers have service information stored in the platform. 

The cyberattack isn’t expected to have jeopardized credit card numbers or other information. 

The incident occurred on Monday, June 30, when a cyber criminal targeted a call center and gained access to the third-party platform. While the airline was able to shut down the attack successfully, no account information has been compromised, though the airline is still assessing the damage. 

No flights or other operations have been impacted by the cyberattack. The airline has apologized for the security breach.

“Qantas is taking this incident extremely seriously and is working with government agencies and independent specialised cyber security experts. We will continue to support these agencies as the investigation continues,” said Qantas in the statement. “We’re also putting additional security measures in place to further restrict access and strengthen system monitoring and detection.”  

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