Tickleme

Good day all,


I rarely post in forums such as this but I wanted to warn everybody about what happened to me three weeks ago and the appalling communication from British Airways.


Three weeks ago, I was lying in bed when my phone buzzed as if an email was being received (circa 1am). Then it buzzed again and again and again. Eventually I turned it off. The following day, I checked my email and I had received a little over 1400 emails overnight (usual traffic approx. 15 emails). The first of these emails was a not from BA to tell me that I had successfully changed my password. Curious! I had done nothing of the sort.


I called BA at about 7.45 am to report the problem and after establishing that my mailing address and email address had been changed in their system, I was informed that 350,000 air miles had also been stolen.


I think the hackers had put my email address into some kind of SPAM generator and my email address has now been rendered practically useless also.


British Airways have thus far provided me with no information about what is happening and I am deeply concerned about the security of their website. There is extremely sensitive data in that website including Credit Card Details, Passport Number, Home address, telephone numbers, flight details, etc etc.


I am posting this to all as a warning to keep vigilant and, if your passwords are not strong (mine was on the high side of medium strength), it may be worth considering strengthening them.


I am thoroughly disappointed that BA have failed to contact me so far as the hackers have accessed significant amounts of information, changed numerous details in my account and know where I live and when I will be out of the country!


Regards,

KARFA

I assume many of the 1400 emails are from other sites and services where you are registered? Perhaps this suggests the breach occurred at your end (perhaps your or emails were hacked) rather than at BA.com.

These situations have arisen from time to time and there are a few threads on here by those who have previously suffers. It seems in every case there avios position has been restored by BA after some time so you shouldn't lose out in the end.

nux

Was the first email to reset your password, as what you would receive if you followed the 'Forgot password' link? If so it sounds like they had access to your email account and used that to reset your BAEC account.

If not, was your BAEC password unique, or shared with other accounts? Were any other accounts compromised?

Did you use any auto-login or third party tool that you entered your BAEC details into (KVS, AwardWallet)?

Tickleme

My thoughts at first were that it was an email issue but the 1400+ emails all came from sites that I have never visited never mind subscribed to. My email security has not been compromised. My belief is that somebody wanted to mask the British Airways email in hundreds of others or just cause as much disruption as possible.


The loss of the air miles is so much less of a problem than the fact that a huge amount of personal sensitive data has been accessed by criminals.

Tickleme

It's certainly an odd one. It was purely a change of email address notification. Very odd.

BA Humbug

Sorry to hear you've been hacked. Did you use any sketchy wifi spots to access your ba account recently?

However, how exactly do you expect BA to "know" you've been hacked? Changing a password is hardly a red flag, and neither is claiming lots of points -- I've recently spent a lot of Avios on many bookings in one sitting.

I agree with the concerns over the security of the website, though:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ios-spent.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...nt-hacked.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...os-stolen.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...-well-now.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...nt-hacked.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...os-hacked.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ot-hacked.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...-accounts.html

Mods, perhaps we should start a "Help, my BA was hacked! clinic thread?" @:-)

Tickleme

I don't expect BA to know that the account was being hacked. However, I would expect some form of customer support follow up after reporting the incident.

corporate-wage-slave

Welcome to Flyertalk and the BA forum Tickleme, it's good to see you here, but less good to see what happened to you. It sounds like a very bad situation for you, and I suspect it will take a few weeks to be resolved. And so long as you were took reasonable precautions with your security, BA will refund the Avios in due course. I hope it doesn't take too long and that you will continue to participate here - which would indeed have forewarned you about this nuisance.

I've worked with someone offline about this, and I'm reasonably confident that BA's security is quite robust. The trouble is that people tend to share passwords between different sites, including sites which don't have much value to hackers so they aren't so secure, but the hackers tend to move on up the value chain. Now I don't know if this applied here, but particularly with BA.com you best have a tough password used only on BA.com and changed regularly.

cgtechuk

Sorry to hear of this, I agree with the others, It sounds to me like the email was comprimised it doesnt need to be a simple password to gain access to your mail, if there is a piece of rogue software on your PC then it would have access to the passwords on your PC , Stored in Outlook, Saved in Webforms etc and it could be gained that way. The reason I say this is because if someone had managed to get into the BA account they would have no need to change the password first and therefore risk detection.

i think they got access to your email as they got the password from something on your PC then because they had that they could use it to reset the passwords for other sites that use the email address as the forgotten password link. The 1400 emails was a distraction so you didn't see the activity, This can also be started by a Trojan / virus on the machine.

Have you checked the machine for viruses bugs?

jose2000

I would have thought access to emails would have meant that no masking would have been necessary... With access they could just delete the pertinent emails.

cgtechuk

Also on a side note, Your passport details will be safe as will your CC, If you try and edit your details screen on BA and try to view the passport number it will ask you to confirm the passport number before viewing it on screen which they wouldn't have also the credit card number even if stored forces you for the security code each time, so in that respect its safe.

cgtechuk

Also true, Didnt think of that, Unless the SPAM is what the malware kicks off anyway? If there is any that is

BillyBleach

So the lesson here is have a STRONG password not a medium strength one. On all sites you really would be hurt by being hacked on.

Gomac

Yes after reading several reports of this on FT over the past couple of months I have changed my BA password to something completely different from all other sites.

travelwithross

It doesn't for me. Just asks for my DOB to view all my personal details.