Australian airline Qantas on Monday confirmed that it has received an extortion attempt following the June 30 cyberattack and data breach at one of its call centers.
Last week, the country’s flag carrier announced that hackers accessed a third-party platform used by the contact center and exfiltrated data from it.
The platform contained service records for 6 million customers, including personal information such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and frequent flyer numbers.
The compromised platform was immediately secured and no Qantas systems were affected by the attack. The airline’s operations were not impacted.
In a July 7 update, the company said it has seen no further threat activity on the compromised system, that Qantas Frequent Flyer accounts were not affected, and that no credit card information, passport details, or financial data was compromised.
Additionally, the airline revealed that the threat actor behind the attack has contacted it, and that it is currently working on validating the hacker’s claims.
“As this is a criminal matter, we have engaged the Australian Federal Police and won’t be commenting any further on the details of the contact,” Qantas said.
The company also noted that it has no evidence that any of the stolen data has been released publicly, adding that it continues to monitor the web for potential leaks.
“We are continuing to investigate the proportion of data that has been stolen,” it said.
The airline says it sent an initial email notice to all Qantas Frequent Flyer members, and an additional message to all customers aged 15 and above, to notify them of the data breach. This week, an update will be sent to the impacted customers with information on the compromised personal information.
The company also warned of threat actors impersonating Qantas to trick customers into revealing their passwords, booking reference details, and other sensitive information over email, text, and phone calls.
“We are aware of reports of scammers impersonating Qantas. This is unfortunately common after incidents like this. We recommend customers remain alert for unusual communications claiming to be from Qantas or requesting personal information or passwords,” the company noted.
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