American Airlines is informing some customers that their personal information may have been compromised after threat actors gained access to employee email accounts.
The airline said a phishing campaign resulted in the mailboxes of a ‘limited number’ of employees getting accessed by hackers. The compromised email accounts contained the personal information of some customers.
According to the notification letters sent out to impacted individuals, the attacker could have obtained information such as name, date of birth, phone number, mailing address, email address, driver’s license number, passport number, and even medical information.
American Airlines said there is no evidence that the exposed personal information has been misused, but it has decided to offer free identity protection services to impacted individuals. The service has been offered through Experian for two years.
The company said the breach was discovered in July 2022 and the hacked email accounts have been secured. An outside company was called in to conduct a forensic investigation.
American Airlines is not the only major airline to disclose a cybersecurity incident recently. Portuguese airline TAP Air Portugal was recently hit by ransomware, with the cybercriminals claiming to have exfiltrated customer data.
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Related: Multiple Airlines Impacted by Data Breach at Aviation IT Firm SITA
Related: Flaw in Reservation System Impacts Many Airlines
Related: Air Charter Firm Solairus Aviation Suffers Data Breach
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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