Ten years data of the Air India customer data including credit cards, passports and phone numbers have been leaked in a massive cyber-attack on its data processor in February, as per the airline .The incident has affected around 45 lakh customers registered between 26th August 2011 and 3rd February 2021, Air India said, disclosing the scale of the breach nearly three months after it was first informed of it.

SITA PSS was hacked before as well. Companies should go for VAPT and Bounty programs, on what is exposed... it's running late to close the holes. Now Air India's SITA PSS data processor is been accessed by hackers.

SITA PSS our data processor of the passenger service system (which is responsible for storing and processing of personal information of the passengers) had recently been subjected to a cybersecurity attack leading to personal data leak of certain passengers. This incident affected around 4,500,000 data subjects in the world," Air India said in an email to customers.

SITA, a technology company that provides services to the transportation industry and has 400 members based in Geneva, and who claims that most air passengers touch its technology during travels, was hacked.

"While we had received the first notification in this regard from our data processor on 25.02.2021, we would like to clarify that the identity of the affected data subjects was only provided to us by our data processor on 25.03.2021 and 5.04.2021," it added.

"The breach involved personal data registered between 26th August 2011 and 3rd February 2021, with details that included name, date of birth, contact information, passport information, ticket information, Star Alliance and Air India frequent flyer data (but no passwords data were affected) as well as credit cards data. However, in respect of this last type of data, CVV/CVC numbers are not held by our data processor," the airline said.

Air India said it had launched an investigation into the incident and took steps including securing the compromised servers, engaging external specialists of data security incidents, contacting credit card issuers and resetting passwords of its frequent flyer programme.