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Date Published: 13/10/2023

Russian hackers responsible for Air Europa cyberattack in Mallorca

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The criminals targeted the airline’s Spanish headquarters and compromised 100,000 bank cards

Russian hackers responsible for Air Europa cyberattack in Mallorca

The cyberattack on Air Europa was carried out by Russian hackers who gained access to the carrier’s servers at its headquarters in Mallorca, the airline has revealed.

This infiltration, the second the company has endured since 2018, occurred between September 26 and 29 and compromised the information of around 100,000 customer bank cards, although it was not until Tuesday October 10 that Air Europa sounded the alarm.

The hackers managed to steal data from customers who used the Air Europa website to buy tickets, and now have access to thousands of card numbers, expiry dates and CVC pins, although to date there’s been no evidence of fraudulent activity.

Once all the details of the latest cyberattack are known, the airline, which was fined 600,000 euros for the previous problem in 2018, will take additional measures and activate liability insurance. On that occasion, the fraudulent use of 4,000 cards was detected, just under 1% of those stolen.

According to the experts, the scammers would have gained access to Air Europa’s system through a technique called web skimming. This involves accessing the company's servers and modifying the source code of the page where they ask you to enter your card information.

When this data is sent, that page makes a call to the payment gateway. Everything seems normal, the experts explain, but it also transmits the data to an attacker's server.

"The cyberattack may have had blackmail as its object, but we can’t rule out that the stolen data has been sold on the dark web, so the possibilities of being the target of fraud and theft of funds are multiplied," the Association of Financial Users (Asufin) said in a statement.

In other news: Ryanair opens new base in Spain with bumper winter flight programme

Image: Freepik

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