Security News
India's flag carrier, Air India, has admitted it fell foul of the data breach at aviation information services provider SITA, and that its disclosure comes five weeks after it was notified of the situation. A new statement [PDF] from the airline says that personal data describing around 4.5 million of its customers leaked when SITA revealed it had been breached in March 2021.
Personal data of an unspecified number of travelers has been compromised after a company that serves India's national carrier was hacked, Air India said. The hackers were able to access 10 years' worth of data including names, passport and credit card details from the Atlanta-based SITA Passenger Service System, Air India said in a statement Friday.
India's flag carrier airline, Air India, has disclosed a data breach affecting 4.5 million of its customers over a period stretching nearly 10 years after its Passenger Service System provider SITA fell victim to a cyber attack earlier this year. The breach involves personal data registered between Aug. 26, 2011 and Feb. 3, 2021, including details such as names, dates of birth, contact information, passport information, ticket information, Star Alliance, and Air India frequent flyer data as well as credit card data.
Air India disclosed a data breach after personal information belonging to roughly 4.5 million of its customers was leaked two months following the hack of Passenger Service System provider SITA in February 2021. "This is to inform that SITA PSS our data processor of the passenger service system had recently been subjected to a cybersecurity attack leading to personal data leak of certain passengers," Air India said in a breach notification sent over the weekend.
As COVID-19 continues to ravage India, the nation's government has told it populace that 5G signals have nothing to do with the spread of the virus - if only because no 5G networks operate in India. After pointing out that the very notion is a nonsense, the department points out that India approved 5G trials on May 4th and they won't start for months.
As India battles a surging second wave of COVID-19 cases and severe shortages of medical supplies, the nation's government has told Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to remove social media posts it says may panic its populace with misinformation. The takedown requests were lodged on Friday, a day before India recorded more than 300,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time ever in 24 hours.
India's National Health Authority has commenced a pilot of facial recognition software as a means of identifying people as they queue in the nation's COVID-19 vaccine centres. The reason for using facial biometrics is simple: fingerprints or eyeball scans require touching equipment and getting close to machinery, both risky activities during the pandemic.
Indian payment app maker MobiKwik has denied its security has been breached, saying that if it's true, as has been claimed, that its customers' information has appeared on the dark web, then some other platform was totally responsible for that. "Some users have reported that their data is visible on the dark web," reads a message from the company, dated March 30.
The first "Quad summit" of leaders from Australia, India, Japan, and the USA has announced the group will create a "Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group". The joint "Spirit of the Quad" statment said the group will: "Respond to the economic and health impacts of COVID-19, combat climate change, and address shared challenges, including in cyber space, critical technologies, counterterrorism, quality infrastructure investment, and humanitarian-assistance and disaster-relief as well as maritime domains."
India's Telecom Regulatory Authority has paused the rollout of a national SMS "Scrubbing" service and blamed business for the delay. The authority, aka TRAI, introduced the scrubbing service to curb text spam in India, where mobile phone users can expect a couple of unsolicited messages every day according to spam-blocking app Truecaller.