Asiana Airlines reports data breach involving employees

Asiana Airlines

Personal information of employees at Asiana Airlines Inc., South Korea‘s No. 2 full-service carrier, has been leaked in a suspected hacking attempt into the intranet, the company said Thursday. Data of its customers, however, was not compromised.

The incident came amid growing public concerns over data protection following major incidents such as the large-scale personal data leak involving e-commerce giant Coupang Inc.

According to aviation industry sources on Thursday, Asiana Airlines internally posted an emergency notice on a personal data breach at around 2:30 p.m. on Thursday.

In the notice, the company said that an external unauthorized access (hacking) to its corporate intranet system, Telepia, had occurred on Wednesday via unauthorized access to an overseas server.

The leaked information includes intranet account IDs and employee numbers, as well as departments, job titles, names, phone numbers, and email addresses of around 10,000 individuals, including Asiana Airlines employees and staff from partner companies such as call centers.

Passwords were not leaked as they were encrypted, and the company has completed password changes while providing individual notifications to affected employees, sources said.

Asiana Airlines emphasized that the incident was strictly limited to intranet account information.

As of now, no customer personal data is believed to have been compromised.

“As soon as we became aware of the employee data breach, we blocked the path of the illegal access,” said an Asiana Airlines official. “After promptly notifying relevant authorities such as the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), we are actively implementing necessary protective measures, including changing system administrator accounts and passwords.”