British Airways: How was its website hacked?

British airways has warned customers that card payments of about 3, 80,000 passengers were compromised on its website and app. According to BA, the breach relates to bookings made between 10:58 pm on 21st August 2018 and 9:45 pm on 5th September.

If any customer has booked a ticket during the above period of breach, British Airways said that it is in the process of contacting all effected customers and advising them to contact their bank or card provider and follow their advice. Accordingly to British Airways the incident has been resolved and all systems are working normally.

Though British Airways has not revealed any technical details about this breach, security experts do have some suggestions on possible methods used.

Personal information including name, email addresses, credit card details, which include credit card number, expiry date and the three digit CVV code were stolen by the hacker. But how could this be possible?

Since the CVV code was stolen, it can be deduced that the breach could have happened at the point of entry, since CVV codes are not meant to be stored by companies and are only used during verification of a transaction. One possible way in which this could have been done is by using a script on the website which managed to intercept all the above data.

Websites have been increasingly embedding code from third party suppliers to run payment authorization, for authentication, chat, placing ad etc. It could be possible that one of these scripts, which had access to the above data could be vulnerable or compromised. It could also be possible that an insider, who had access to the system, may have tampered with the website and placed the malicious code.

As per British Airways CEO Alex Cruz, the airline learned of the breach on Thursday and began communicating with passengers within a matter of hours. Cruz has called the attack "malicious" and "sophisticated," adding that it's the first time the airline's website has been hacked since its launch more than two decades ago. BA repeatedly urges customers to contact their bank or credit card provider and follow their instructions to minimize any potential financial losses.

"No British Airways customer will be left out of pocket as a result of this criminal cyber-attack on its website - ba.com and the airline's mobile app. The airline has guaranteed that financial losses suffered by customers directly because of the theft of this data from British Airways will be reimbursed, and is recommending that customers contact their bank or card provider if they made a booking between 22:58 BST August 21 2018 and 21:45 BST September 5 2018," he stated.

The real reason of compromise will only be known once British Airways reveals the details. Such details could help other enterprises to re-audit their security and improve it.