British Airways in a shocking revelation said that hundreds of thousands of customers’ personal and financial details were stolen and this hack continued for almost two weeks as 380,000 payments compromised.
So the Airways now has launched an “urgent” investigation into the matter. But as notified by the airlines the stolen information did not include travel or passport details.
The airline discovered on Wednesday that British Airways Chairman and Chief Executive Alex Cruz said that it was on Wednesday that the airline discovered that bookings made between Aug. 21 and Sept. 5 had been infiltrated in a “very sophisticated, malicious criminal” attack.
"We are committed to working with any customer who may have been financially affected by this attack, and we will compensate them for any financial hardship that they may have suffered," Cruz said in a BBC programme. Cruz said attackers had not broken the airline’s encryption but did not elucidate exactly how they had obtained the customer information.
According to officials, British Airways' mobile app was also breached.
The company also experienced a similar IT-related crisis in May last year when roughly 75,000 passengers were stranded following the airline canceled about 700 flights over three days due to system problems.
British Airways requests customers who booked flights through ba.com or the airline’s to contact banks and credit card providers. Hackers even obtained names, email addresses, street and credit card numbers, expiry dates and security codes enough information to steal from accounts.
British Airways (BA) is the largest airline in the United Kingdom based on fleet size and second largest measured by passengers carried just behind easyJet.