Five million passenger and employees data at risk after AirAsia faces ransomware attack

Five million AirAsia passengers and employees have fallen victim where their personal data has been involved in a ransomware attack earlier this month on Nov 11 and 12 by Daixin Team.

Two.csv files, which Daixin Team provided to AirAsia Group, were given to DataBreaches, a website that documents data breach occurrences globally.

It claimed that one file had personal details of both passengers and employees of AirAsia.

The first file consists of one file that has details on passengers, specifically their names.

The second file had information about the employees, including names, dates of birth, nationalities, places of birth, dates of employment beginning, “secret question,” “answer,” and salt.

DataBreaches.com reported that AirAsia responded to the attack and engaged with the hacker group via chat. 

After receiving a sample of the data, the airline did not make any further attempts to negotiate the ransom amount, which suggests the airline did not intend to pay the attackers any money, according to the spokesperson for the Daixin Team.

The company claimed that over the last few years, Malaysian entities have frequently been the subject of cyberattacks, as evidenced by the quantity of databases and leaks on forums dedicated to hacking or a search of this site.

Unfortunately, AirAsia was not the only victim when it comes to ransomware attack Malaysia Airlines reported data security incidents in both 2020 and 2021 as well.