Hacking! Personal data of 45 lakh Air India customers compromised

It has been reported that Air India’s passenger service system provider SITA suffered from a cyberattack in February. Air India has confirmed the same. It also said that the attack has resulted in the leak of personal data of a whopping number of passengers.

The contact information, credit card details and DoB of 4.5 million passengers have been accessed by the attackers. Those who booked a ticket between August 11, 2011, and February 3, 2021 have been affected in terms of the leak of personal data.

Air India has asked its passengers to change passwords wherever applicable out of caution. The servers of Air India were hacked, leading to an unethical and potentially harmful outing of private data. Sensitive information such as passport details have also been leaked.

Several angry commentators are saying that Air India must be penalized for letting the breach happened due to negligence. They are also saying that the affected individuals have to be paid compensation.

Hacking incidents are not rare these days. Several such incidents come to light only months after they happen. Several countries and agencies using personal data of their customers for services have been at a loss to maintain fool-proof systems. But since Air India is a behemoth, one would have expected it to be more diligent and secure the data of its customers.