The target: Star Alliance airlines, Air New Zealand, Malaysia Airlines, Finnair and others
The take: Frequent flyer information for at least a million passengers, including name, date of birth, gender, contact information, ID number and frequent flyer status.
The attack vector: The breach was traced to SITA, an IT service provider that claims to serve 90% of the global aviation industry, and acts as the intermediary to store and share frequent flyer information between airlines.
Supply chain attacks continue to pose a material threat, as bad actors identify high-value targets which can enable them to capture information for multiple organizations at once. When entrusting service providers with sensitive information, firms are still ultimately responsible for their data and must ensure that commensurate controls travel with it throughout its lifecycle.