A formal investigation is being launched over a data breach at Cathay Pacific Airways involving 9.4 million passengers, Hong Kong's privacy watchdog announced.
Hong Kong's privacy commissioner said on Monday the carrier may have violated privacy rules when the personal information of passengers including their names, emails, addresses, passport numbers and expired credit card numbers were hacked.
The airline has faced criticism for the seven-month delay in its October revelation of the breach in the data, which it said had been accessed without authorisation, following suspicious activity in its network in March.
A formal investigation is being launched over a data breach at Cathay Pacific Airways involving 9.4 million passengers, Hong Kong's privacy watchdog announced on Monday (file photo)
Hong Kong's privacy commissioner said on Monday the carrier may have violated privacy rules when the personal information of passengers were hacked back in March (file photo)
'There are reasonable grounds to believe there may be a contravention of a requirement under the law,' Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Stephen Wong, said in a statement.
'The compliance investigation is going to examine in detail, amongst others, the security measures taken by Cathay Pacific to safeguard its customers' personal data and the airline's data retention policy and shopcvv practice,' he added.
It will also cover Cathay's fully owned subsidiary, Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Ltd, or Dragon Air, some of whose passengers were affected by the breach.
A Cathay Pacific spokeswoman said in an email to Reuters that the airline was studying the statement and would 'continue to cooperate fully with the authorities.'
The privacy watchdog said it had received 89 complaints related to the cyber leak.
In addition to 860,000 passport numbers and about 245,000 Hong Kong identity card numbers, the hackers accessed 403 expired credit card numbers and 27 credit card numbers with no card verification value (CVV), Cathay said.
A Cathay Pacific spokeswoman said in an email to Reuters that the airline was studying the statement and would 'continue to cooperate fully with the authorities' (file photo)
The investigation into the breach will also cover Cathay's fully owned subsidiary, Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Ltd, or Dragon Air, some of whose passengers were affected (file photo)
It was not immediately clear who was behind the personal data breach or what the information might be used for, but Cathay said there was no evidence so far that any personal information had been misused.
Under Hong Kong law, the privacy commissioner can call witnesses, enter premises and hold public hearings in the investigation, which will check if Cathay violated any requirement of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance.
The controversy has spurred calls from politicians and privacy advocates for Hong Kong to revamp its laws to make the reporting of such potential data breaches mandatory.
Cathay's share price initially plunged to its lowest since June 2009 after the scandal but has rebounded and recovered all its losses.
The stocks were up 1.7 per cent on Tuesday afternoon.
The data breach comes amid an airline turnaround to cut costs and boost revenue, after back-to-back years of losses, so as to better compete with rivals from the Middle East, mainland China and budget airlines.
It is the latest IT blunder involving an airline, after British Airways admitted it lost the details of 360,000 people in a breach in September.
The stolen information related to bookings between August 21 and September 5 and included personal and financial information, the airline said.