Qantas has been hit by a data breach at one of its contact centres, with the personal information of over 6 million customers compromised.
The Australian carrier says the incident occurred on 30 June when a cyber criminal “targeted a call centre and gained access to a third-party customer servicing platform”.
It had detected “unusual activity” on the online platform, and subsequently “took immediate steps” to contain the data breach.
The data breach has since been contained, and Qantas stresses that there is no impact to its day-to-day operations or safety.
“We are continuing to investigate the proportion of the data that has been stolen, though we expect it will be significant. An initial review has confirmed the data includes some customers’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and frequent flyer numbers,” the airline states.
However, the breach did not affect credit card or passport details as these were not held in the online platform. Qantas adds that no frequent flyer accounts were compromised either.
Qantas group chief Vanessa Hudson says the carrier is working closely with the authorities on investigations and will be reaching out to affected customers.
