Thousands of British Airways frequent flyer accounts have been breached by hackers, reports ZDNet.
Thousands of British Airways frequent flyer accounts have been breached by hackers, reports ZDNet.
The company has taken the step of freezing ‘tens of thousands’ of accounts in the wake of the attack, but revealed that no personal information had been taken in the hack. Affected customers will be unable to access or use their accumulated air miles until further notice, however.
The Guardian claims that the attack was due to an automated computer program that searches for vulnerabilities, but so far it is not known who was behind the attack.
A spokesperson told IB Times, “British Airways has become aware of some unauthorized activity in relation to a small number of frequent-flyer executive club accounts. This appears to have been the result of a third party using information obtained elsewhere on the internet, via an automated process, to try to gain access to some accounts.”
“We would like to reassure customers that, at this stage we are not aware of any access to any subsequent information pages within accounts, including travel histories or payment card details.”
“We are sorry for the concern and inconvenience this matter has caused, and would like to reassure customers that we are taking this incident seriously and have taken a number of steps to lock down accounts so they can no longer be accessed,” the statement ended.
The service has millions of members, and is free to join, so only a relatively small number of accounts have been affected. British Airways is due to have the service back up and running again within the next couple of days.
