The Major Incidents of Cyberattacks In The Aviation Industry

Through this article, we will gain a thorough understanding as to why cyberattacks in aviation industry are happening continuously. The aviation industry includes many different types of businesses, including airlines, airports, technology suppliers, etc., which have now become the prime targets for cybercriminals to do their illegal activities in the form of different cybercrimes and due to this reason, it has become a major problem as far as the security perspective of entire aviation industry is concerned.

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Why Cybercriminals Are Targeting Aviation Industry?

Cybercriminals are continuously targeting the aviation industry more nowadays for the following major reasons: –

1) The aviation industry has become a popular target for cybercriminals due to the most sensitive and confidential information of the people who are using the services of different government and privately owned airlines that can be easily accessible through various available online aviation platforms which have given the access to cybercriminals as well in gaining sensitive and confidential information like passport and payment information of the customers who are using the services of these airlines.

2) In the aviation industry, payments are typically high value and time-sensitive. As a result, the cybercriminals have recognized that they could use this high value and time-sensitive payment information for high-value credit cards to commit online fraud or, attempt to extort the airline’s servers through committing major cyberattacks like DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks and Ransomware attacks in order to steal sensitive and confidential information of airline customers.

3) Due to the above mentioned reasons, since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, the aviation industry has experienced a severe economic decline. According to some experts, the aviation industry suffered a staggering loss of 250 billion USD in 2020. But Cybercriminals have continued to target the aviation industry in spite all of this and surprisingly their reach is getting bigger and bigger day by day which have become a huge concern for aviation industry.

Cyberattacks on Aviation Industry in Recent Years

The following is a description of some of the most recent incidents of cyberattacks that has seriously affected the aviation industry and resulted in significant data and financial losses: –

1)May 2020

The press release of a British airline company named EasyJet in May 2020 said that cybercriminals hacked their servers and stolen the most sensitive and confidential data of around 9 million of their customers. As the airline company had been targeted by one of the most advanced and sophisticated attacks in recent times, their entire security infrastructure had been compromised.

Although the attack took place in January 2020, but EasyJet didn’t make the information public until May 2020. As a result, they faced a lawsuit seeking 18 billion pounds in damages and received a lot of backlash from their customers. However, the airline company claimed that cybercriminals were only manage to steal information like details of email address and travel information not the passport details.

But the customers were not satisfied with their response. As a consequence, the lawsuit was filed involving people from more than 50 countries all around the world which caused a huge damage to their business and reputation of the airline company in a time when the pandemic was at its peak and the entire aviation industry was hit the worst by the pandemic.

2)August 2018

Another incident of a cyberattack happened in August 2018, where the mobile application of a Govt. of Canada owned airline company named Canada Airlines was hacked in order to steal sensitive and confidential information of their customers like passport details, payment information and travel program of the customers. However, the airline company claimed that no information regarding payment details of customers were stolen by cybercriminals in this cyberattack.

After the data theft was identified, as a precautionary measure the airline company locked the accounts of all its customers until they changed their login IDs and passwords for which the communication via email were being sent to all of its customers in order to make sure that their accounts were not at risk and a proper assurance has been given by the airline company to all of its customers that they were working closely with leading cybersecurity experts in order to improve the entire security infrastructure.

3)Feb 2021

The most recent cyberattacks happened in the aviation industry was during Feb 2021 and the incident was named as SITA data breaching. SITA is a leading service provide company of IT and telecommunications to the aviation industry. Cybercriminals had targeted their servers in order to steal sensitive and confidential information of their 2 million customers all around the world and were able to gain access to their servers and the Passenger Service System (PSS), which was in charge of handling everything from ticket ordering to boarding.

The majority of the victims were participants in various flying programs and information like names, numbers, etc. from travel program cards were among the stolen data. SITA, however, asserted that private information such as email addresses and passwords was safe and secure. But this incident of data breach caused a significant amount of financial and reputation loss to the company.

The Conclusion

Hence from the above discussion, we can conclude this article by saying that, nowadays most of the airlines are investing quickly in more advanced technologies with the aim to give their clients the greatest possible user experience.

A cyberattack of the highest order might cause the airline to lose money and harm its reputation. Therefore, it is necessary for the airlines to implement different cybersecurity measures to boost their entire security infrastructure network which is need of the hour.

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