Virgin America Airlines Targeted by Hackers Putting Employee Data at Risk

Virgin America has come out with a statement that on the 13th of March this year, there has been a breach in their system. In a letter to their employees, they reveal that their security systems in place have identified a third party accessing their data on the said date. They claim that they have responded immediately to try and minimize the damage done to the employees and contractors that have fallen victim to the attack.

Unfortunately, Virgin America doesn't reveal any particular information about who the attackers might have been. However, they claim that they are working in cooperation with the law enforcement institutions to resolve the issue as it is still unknown how the attack happened and what were the vulnerabilities that the hackers exploited. Virgin America also claims that they have turned to a cybersecurity company for their expertise but have refused to name it. In the letter, however, it's not mentioned how many victims there were as a result of the infiltration in their servers. This is probably done to prevent sparking panic among Virgin America's staff.

Despite this, there has been a spokesperson of the company who stated that the total number of members of staff and contractors whose data has been compromised is approximately 3,120 which is quite the staggering number. However, there might be some even more unfortunate souls in this story. It's likely that 110 of the total 3,120 victims may have had some of their personal information stolen. Data such as names, addresses, driving licenses' data and Social Security numbers might have ended up in the hands of the cyber crooks which would put the affected parties in a very distressing position. All the staff and contractors are advised to set up new passwords in order to secure their accounts. They have also suggested that the victims should closely monitor their bank statements, despite the fact that no credit card data has been stolen. According to the company, there hasn't been any customer data stolen or compromised by the hacker attack.

The same spokesperson, who is also an ex-employee, shed some light into the situation in Virgin America. He claims that the company uses Google as its email host. The company has also taken advantage of the highest security measures that Google mail offers – the two-factor authentication. This would make it impossible for the attacker to steal the sensitive data by taking advantage of an account with escalated privileges. This means that it is likely that the hacker attack was carried out without the use of administrator credentials, and it is likely that the cyber criminals found an alternative vulnerability which was exploited to access Virgin America's information.

Richard Branson's Virgin America was bought by Alaska Air last year for $2.6 billion. Virgin America announced that their parent company's servers have not been breached and there aren't any traces of malicious activity.

This saga, however, shouldn't make you think it's all roses if you're just a regular user. Cybercrime isn't limited only to targeting businesses and institutions. All of us are vulnerable to cyber criminals. Once you're connected to the Internet, there's no way to be 100% secure and hack proof. What you could do, though, to minimize the risks, is to make sure that your system doesn't have any out-of-date apps as they pose a great threat to your security. Also, naturally, you need a reputable and reliable anti-malware suite which would sniff out any potential threats to your system as soon as they pop out.