Tens of thousands of British Airways (BA) frequent flyer accounts have been hacked, forcing the airline to freeze all affected accounts, media reports said on Sunday.
BA however confirmed that only a small proportion of its millions of customers were affected, and no names, addresses, bank details or other personal information had been accessed.
“We would like to reassure customers that at this stage we are not aware of any access to any subsequent information pages within accounts, including travel histories or payment card details,” a spokesperson from BA said.
The airlines has meanwhile frozen the affected accounts while it resolves the issue. It means that executive club flyers may not be able to use their air miles, until the issue is resolved by the airline.
Apologising to the customers, the airlines said that it expected to have the system back up and running in the next day or so, The Mirror reported.
“We are sorry for the concern and inconvenience this matter has caused and would like to reassure customers that we are taking this incident seriously and have taken a number of steps to lock down accounts so they can no longer be accessed,” spokesperson said.
It is not known who is behind the hack, but it is believed to have been carried out by an automated computer programme, looking for chinks in the armour of the company’s online security systems.
“British Airways has become aware of some unauthorised activity in relation to a small number of frequent flyer executive club accounts. This appears to have been the result of a third party using information obtained elsewhere on the internet, via an automated process, to try to gain access to some accounts.” spokesperson said.