BA and Boots UK staff hit by major cyber attack as details get exposed

British Airways cancels more flights

It has recently been reported that British Airways and Boots are just two of the companies to have been the victims of a huge cyber attack in the United Kingdom.

British Airways have recently confirmed to the media that all of its staff that get paid in the UK have been the victims of this latest cyber attack, which will mean that hackers have gained access to a lot of their personal information.

Since the war broke out in Ukraine between themselves and Russia, there have been several high-profile cyber-attacks that are being linked to the latter and this is just the latest one that has also impacted the BBC, according to a report in The Telegraph.

The latest attack appears to be on the software called MOVEit Transfer, which is how a huge number of employees get paid every month by companies such as British Airways, meaning their personal information, bank account details and National Insurance numbers all being available to hackers.

Cyber attack rocks BA and Boots

While only a few companies, such as BA, Boots and the BBC are said to be victims of this attack, there are said to be thousands of others who are yet to go public about whether or not their employees’ details are now out in the wider domain.

Something that will be worrying to many workers – not just those with BA – is that it was apparently a mixture of previous and newly found flaws in this payroll system, so it may be a surprise that this wasn’t noticed or fixed much earlier.

In a way to assure employees that their details were being looked after and that steps were also being taken to ensure their personal details were protected and not hosted by criminals, BA said the following:

This incident happened because of a new and previously unknown vulnerability in a widely used MOVEit file transfer tool. We have notified those colleagues whose personal information has been compromised to provide support and advice.”

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Written by

Aaron Hindhaugh

Qualified and experienced journalist covering all aspects of news and sport. Specialist in both Men's and Women's football with increasing coverage of golf and tennis.

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