A data breach at flight booking
site Option Way exposed
personal details on passengers and their flight and travel plans.
Researchers
at vpnMentor led by Noam
Rotem and Ran Locar were âable to access over 100 GB of
data, a massive amount of
customersâ unencrypted Personally Identifiable Information (PII),â including
names, birth dates, gender email addresses, destinations, flight prices and flight
departure and return dates.
User emails were accessible through ââincorrect passwordâ reset links,â which exposed exposed the wide database to potential hacks, and Option Way users to a lot of potential fraud,â the researchers wrote in a blog post.
âDuring our investigation, we also found the companyâs credit card
details unmasked and viewable to anybody with access to the
database,â the researchers said, referring to the breach as a âgoldmine for
identity thieves and other attackers.â
âCompanies need to be aware that their digital surface
can also be leveraged by attackers seeking a way to obtain personal info or a
springboard into the company,â said Elad Shapira, head of research of Panorays.
âThis is what is called the companyâs âattack surfaceâ and it includes outdated
technologies such as open ports that provide Web services into/from the
internal company servers, misconfigured and not hardened servers, open and
exposed AWS S3 buckets, and even inadvertently exposed internal sites due to server
misconfiguration.â
Shapira said companies should âevaluate their attack
surface and continuously monitor it for any changes that may pinpoint a threat,â
including evaluating third parties. âIn todayâs digital world, companies
outsource their data storage, processing and analysis to other services, such
as was the case here with Option Way,â he said. âCompanies had provided Option
Way their sensitive and confidential employee and customer details.â
Gloss