In early evening on Friday 18 August 2023, Luxair announced that it was informing its customers that a security incident, resulting in a breach of personal data, had occurred at an external service provider working for the airline.
According to Luxair's statement, this external service provider supports Luxair in communicating with its customers in the event of flight disruptions or delays, so that affected customers can receive meal vouchers and organise hotel reservations if necessary. The service provider - who was not named - hosts its data in a cloud, which the airline claimed was not adequately secured, contrary to the guarantees it had given in terms of information security, resulting in access via the Internet to the server on which Luxair customer data were processed.
As such, the booking data of customers whose flights had been disrupted between November 2020 and 4 July 2023, resulting in the granting of a meal voucher, a necessary hotel reservation because of such disruption, or any disruption warning communication by SMS, was made accessible to unauthorised third parties. The airline stressed that this does not, however, mean that all data has actually been accessed.
According to the airline, the server in question has now been re-secured, preventing the data from being accessed. For the time being, the provider's services, for vouchers and hotel bookings, have been suspended until further notice.
On the basis of the data made accessible in this way, the airline has advised passengers, in order to protect themselves against any fraudulent use of their data, to be extra vigilant when receiving messages (particularly phishing) that could reproduce Luxair's visual identity or be based on data from past flights.
Luxair has published some advice for its customers, to avoid being victims of such acts of phishing:
• It is important not to open e-mail attachments that look suspicious. First and foremost, it is necessary to make sure that the domain name of the e-mail corresponds to a legitimate e-mail address. The SPAMBEE initiative enables to report and detect such e-mails;
• Avoid sending confidential information via e-mail;
• Finally, check that electronic devices (such as cell phones and computers) are up to date and report any suspicious incidents to BEE-SECURE, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg's government initiative to promote the safe and responsible use of information technology.
Finally, a dedicated e-mail address (data.breach@luxairgroup.lu), enabling anyone wishing to obtain further information about this incident, to contact the Data Protection Officer, has been set up.
