Oct 30 (Reuters) – Hong Kong flagship carrier Cathay Pacific Airways said on Friday a data security breach at the Spanish software provider Amadeus affected around 53,000 bookings, though its own systems and operations were unaffected.
Cathay joins other airlines, including Japan Airlines and South Korea’s Asiana Airlines, that recently flagged customer data was compromised in the Amadeus breach.
• The October 28 breach included booking reference, passenger name and flight details in most cases, but additional personal information was compromised in a smaller subset of cases, Cathay Pacific said
• Cathay Pacific said the breach affected bookings from August 2023 to September, citing Amadeus data, and added there was “no evidence that financial or payment information was accessed”
• It said Amadeus has taken actions to contain the incident and implemented enhanced monitoring and detection capabilities on its systems
• Amadeus said it had become aware of a vulnerability affecting a travel booking display environment, but did not respond to a question on how many airlines and customers’ data were affected
• The investigations are ongoing and there are no indications that the vulnerability has been exploited for ransomware purposes, Amadeus added
• Earlier this week, Japan Airlines said a similar breach affected the data of 92,000 customers due to unauthorized access to Amadeus’ system
(Reporting by Javi West Larrañaga in Gdansk; Editing by Vijay Kishore)
