Sabre, American Airlines reportedly hit by hackers
Travel tech solutions company Sabre Corp has become the latest victim of hackers, confirming a data breach, while former parent American Airlines may also have been hit.
Bloomberg reports that investigators suspect the same group of China-linked hackers that were responsible for breaches at insurer Anthem Inc. and the US government’s personnel office (OPM).
American spun off one-time subsidiary Sabre as a separate entity in 2000 but still shares some network infrastructure which hackers may have accessed to enter American’s systems.
"Based on our deep and extensive investigations with the help of outside cybersecurity experts, American has found no evidence that our systems or network have experienced a breach like those at OPM or Anthem," said airline spokesman Casey Norton.
"We are working closely with our partners to further investigate."
Sabre released a statement saying it had ‘recently learned of a cybersecurity incident’ but would not disclose if or what data was stolen.
"We are not aware that this incident has compromised sensitive protected information, such as credit card data or personally identifiable information, but our investigation is ongoing," the statement said.
Sabre processes millions of travel transactions from air travel, hotel and car rental bookings.
It follows a similar attack a week ago at United Airlines, which is still being probed, but is also being linked to the same group.
Based on the group’s past work, it could well be a big data breach.
Personnel records on 22 million people were stolen in the OPM hack while Social Security numbers and other personal data on more than 80 million customers were hacked at Anthem Inc.
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Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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