Australia's Qantas says 6 million customer accounts accessed in cyber hack

2/7/2025 12:11

A cyber hacker broke into a database containing the personal information of millions of customers, Qantas said, in Australia's biggest breach in years and a setback for an airline rebuilding trust after a reputational crisis.



Qantas said in a statement on Wednesday, the hacker targeted a call centre and gained access to a third-party customer service platform containing six million names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and frequent flyer numbers.



The airline did not specify the location of the call centre or customers whose information was compromised. It said it learnt of the breach after detecting unusual activity on the platform and acted immediately to contain it.



Qantas said, reporting no impact on operations or safety, "We are continuing to investigate the proportion of the data that has been stolen, though we expect it will be significant."



Last week, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said cybercrime group Scattered Spider was targeting airlines and that Hawaiian Airlines and Canada's WestJet had already reported breaches. Qantas did not name any group.