Qantas hack leaks data of 5.7 mn flyers; among information stolen, 1 mn phone numbers & 10,000 meal preferences

In one of Australia’s biggest cyber breaches in recent years, Qantas Airways has confirmed that personal data belonging to 5.7 million customers was accessed by hackers. The airline said on Wednesday that the compromised information includes names, email addresses, home addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, and in some cases, meal preferences.

The disclosure follows Qantas’ announcement last week of a cyberattack. After reviewing and removing duplicate entries, the airline now says 5.7 million unique customer records were affected, down from an initial estimate of six million. The company has clarified that no financial data or credit card information was accessed, and the breach does not allow direct access to frequent flyer accounts.

“There is no evidence that any personal data of the customers has been released and the company is actively monitoring the situation,” Qantas said in a statement.


Qantas Group CEO Vanessa Hudson said, “Since the incident, we have put in place a number of additional cyber security measures to further protect our customers’ data, and are continuing to review what happened.”

The stolen data was broken down as follows:

• 2.8 million customers had their name, email, and frequent flyer number accessed
  
  
• 1.2 million had their name and email taken
  
  
• 1.3 million had their home address exposed
  
  
• 1.1 million had their birth date accessed
  
  
• 900,000 had their phone numbers taken
  
  
• 400,000 had gender data accessed
  
  
• 10,000 had meal preferences compromised
  
  

Qantas has started contacting affected individuals to inform them about what data was involved and how they can access support services. The airline is working with cybersecurity specialists and continues to investigate the incident.

While the attack did not affect financial systems, it poses a serious test for CEO Vanessa Hudson, who has been working to restore the airline’s public image since taking charge nearly two years ago.

The Qantas breach comes amid a rising wave of cyberattacks targeting airlines. In recent weeks, Alaska Air Group Inc.’s Hawaiian Airlines and Canada’s WestJet Airlines Ltd. have also reported breaches. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has attributed several of these incidents to the hacking group Scattered Spider, known for using employee impersonation tactics to gain system access.