Australian airline Qantas says it is investigating “critical” cyberattacks after hackers break into a system that contains sensitive data about six million customers. .
Australian airline Qantas said it was investigating a “critical” cyberattack on Wednesday after hackers broke into a system that contains sensitive data about six million customers.
Qantas said the hackers were targeting one of the customer contact centers and violated computer systems used by third parties.
According to the Blue Chip Australian company, they were able to access sensitive information such as customer names, email addresses, phone numbers and birthdays.
“We have 6 million customers on this platform who have a service record,” the company said in a statement.
“We continue to look at the proportion of stolen data, but we expect that to be important.”
Credit card details and passport numbers are not retained in the system, Qantas added.
“It will not affect Qantas’ operations or the safety of the airline.”
Chief Executive Vanessa Hudson said Qantas has notified Australia’s national cybersecurity coordinator.
“We sincerely apologize to our customers and recognize the uncertainty this creates,” she said.
“Our customers trust us with their personal information and we take that responsibility seriously.”
Christopher Bronk, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Adelaide, said stolen data could be used to stolen identity theft.
“Stolen customer data is valuable in the ability of criminals to resell computer-ready fraud and gain access to other online accounts from victims,” Bronk said.
A series of major cyberattacks have raised concerns in recent years about the protection of Australian personal data.
“These recurring cyberattacks in Australia show that many organizations are still ignoring cybersecurity,” said cybersecurity expert Rumpa Dasgupta.
Dasgupta of Latrobe University in Australia said:
Qantas apologized in 2024 after Glitch released the passenger names and travel details on the mobile app.
A major port that will shut down 40% of Australian freight trademarks in 2023 after hackers infiltrated a computer belonging to Operator DP World.
The Russia-based hacker in 2022 violated one of Australia’s largest private insurance companies, accessing data from over 9 million current and previous customers.
In the same year, telecommunications company Optus suffered a data breaches of similar magnitude, accessing personal details of up to 9.8 million people.
©2025 AFP
Quote: Australian airline Qantas says it was a hit on July 4, 2025 (July 2, 2025), obtained from https://techxplore.com/news/2025-07-07-07-07-07-Airline-qantas-qantas-significant-cyberatcack.html from July 4, 2025.
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