Editing Direct Route For Scammers As Qantas Hack Scale Revealed

<br>Scammers could have a direct route to devising targeted scams for millions of Qantas customers in coming months as the airline reveals exactly what personal data was exposed in a major cyber attack.<br><br>Australia's largest airline on Wednesday disclosed details of the 5.7 million customer records impacted when a third-party system used by an offshore call centre was hacked.<br><br>Of those, the names, email addresses and frequent flyer details of four million customers were exposed.<br><br>The remaining 1.7 million customers had more data taken, including their names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, personal or business addresses, gender and  [https://ppmpp.polinela.ac.id/M77-CASINO gay porn] meal preferences.<br><br>In total, about 10,000 meal preferences were accessed.<br><br>A cybersecurity expert warned compromising such personal information was a "good starting point" for scammers to target individuals.<br><br>"I see this as stage one of the continuous Qantas situation," RMIT University's Matthew Warren told AAP.<br><br>Scam attempts would likely start with [https://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=people%20impersonating people impersonating] Qantas staff in the weeks and months to come as criminals tried to gain financial or passport details, he said<br><br>But the attempts could become more targeted from there, including business invoice scams, especially if the information was distributed widely on the dark web.<br><br>Qantas maintains there is no evidence so far any stolen personal data has been released.<br><br>[https://data.gov.uk/data/search?q=Professor%20Warren Professor Warren] said it was only a matter of time before the hackers published the data but they would likely try to hold Qantas to ransom first.<br><br>"If the data is then sold on the dark net, you're then going to get other groups spending a lot more time trawling through the data and trying to identify possible ways to undertake scams," he said.<br><br>Qantas has begun individually notifying almost six million customers which of their specific personal details have been exposed in the attack.<br><br>The airline previously said a possible cybercriminal had contacted it about the hack, but would not confirm whether a ransom demand had been received.<br><br>Australian Federal Police investigators are also probing the breach.<br><br>Sydney-based customer Nick Allison received an email on Wednesday morning notifying him that his name, frequent flyer number and tier were exposed in the cyber raid.<br><br>Mr Allison, who was also embroiled in the 2022 Optus and 2023 Dymocks hacks, is worried about a rise in phishing attempts as a result of his data being exposed.<br><br>"Is it going to be every single email that I get sent for the rest of my life from Qantas? Is that a scam? Is that real?" he said.<br><br>"How am I going to know? They've got all that data."<br><br>Mr Allison said he had lost some trust in Qantas in the wake of the hack.<br><br>"It makes me very hesitant to give Qantas more information in the future. Is it going to get lost?" he said.<br><br>As the scam risk grows, customers are being urged to remain alert to emails, text messages or phone calls if the sender purports to be from Qantas.<br><br>"Regularly review your compromised accounts and other linked accounts for unusual activity," cybersecurity technology firm McAfee's Tyler McGee said.<br><br>The identity of the group responsible for the attack remains a mystery, although multiple experts believe it is the work of Scattered Spider, a cabal of young cybercriminals living in the US and the UK.<br><br>Qantas said it had set up extra cybersecurity measures to protect customer data.<br><br>