Multiple Airlines Hit By Supply Chain Attack

A major aviation IT company has been breached in what appears to be a highly sophisticated, coordinated supply chain attack affecting multiple airlines and hundreds of thousands of passengers. SITA provides IT and telecoms services to around 400 members in the industry, claiming to serve around 90% of the global airline business. 

SITA has disclosed a data security breach involving their passenger service system servers. “We recognise that the COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about security threats, and, at the same time, cyber criminals have become more sophisticated and active” SITA said in a statement.

The company revealed that attackers had compromised passenger data stored on its SITA Passenger Service System servers in the US which operate passenger processing systems for airline clients.After confirmation of the seriousness of the data security incident on February 24 2021, SITA took immediate action to contact affected SITA PSS customers and all related organisations. 

• Singapore Airlines released a statement this week to the same effect. Although the airline said it is not a customer of SITA, the attackers managed to compromise its KrisFlyer and PPS members’ data via a fellow Star Alliance member. 

• Other airlines affected include Finnair who said 200,000 frequent flyers were affected. Unlike to the devastating data breach at British Airways in 2018, debit and credit card information was not taken, but the airline has advised customers to change their card account passwords.  

• The hack is also thought to be part of an attack on ill-fated Malaysia Airlines, which found that ts frequent flyer programme had been compromised between 2010 and 2019.

Ran Nahmias, co-founder of threat intelligence firm Cyberpion, says the attacks highlight the risks involved in modern IT supply chains. “When you consider the need to monitor the potential risks across a vast ecosystem that includes vector-associated DNS management, cloud providers, web properties, encryption, certificates and mobile infrastructures, the modern IT organization is not prepared to monitor, let alone manage, that risk... When there is a lack of clearly defined oversight and management processes, hackers are able to operate freely and inflict significantly more damage.”

If you are the customer of an airline and have a Data Subject Access Request in relation to the handling of your personal data, this request must be made directly to that airline in accordance with GDPR and data protection legislation. SITA itself is unable to respond directly to such requests.

Singapore Air:          SITA:        Infosecurity Magazine:       YLE Finland: 

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