United Airlines Hacked Again – by China (?) The Chinese group behind the U.S. government's Office of Personnel Management hack is believed to be responsible for the new United Airlines hack.
According to reports, the breach between May and June led to hackers gaining access to "data on the movements of millions of Americans," personal passenger information and, potentially, United's future mergers and acquisition strategy.
Sources say the government-sponsored hacking group believed to be responsible is also behind two breaches of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), compromising the details of about 26 million federal employees, and Anthem. In the latter, it emerged last February that hackers successfully stole information on 78.8 million current and former customers and employees of the health insurance giant.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) has claimed that China is developing a massive database of information on US citizens, which could be used to create damaging attack strategies.
“If researchers are accurate in attributing these attacks to this group, they have amassed a vast database of information that could be used for a variety of purposes, from economic espionage to political gain,” said Tim Erlin, Tripwire’s director of security strategy. “How they connect this data together will determine the outcome, but it’s clearly not good for the United States.”
In this case, data on the geographic movement of individuals has been added to the enemy's overall view of American demographics.
“Citizens’ location-related and personal information is vital to our security and should not be allowed to fall into the hands of a foreign government,” Suni Munshani, CEO of Protegrity, said in an emailed comment.
“With this breach, the target is more personal, and the information is a treasure trove of personally identifiable information that is extremely valuable and harmful in the wrong hands.”
This breach, if proven, would be the second high-profile breach the airline has faced, despite its bug-checking efforts.
“As is often the case in a breach investigation, details of exactly how the attackers managed to penetrate United Airlines’ systems are unclear. It will likely be months before we learn more, but it is imperative that the evidence be shared with other organizations so that we can collectively improve defenses,” Erlin said.
As has been seen in other breaches, attackers often reside on an organization’s internal network for months before being detected. It is clear that standard detection tools simply do not work or are not implemented properly.”
