Sabre Corp Reports Cyber Security Attack, Investigations Underway

In a statement, Sabre, which processes reservations for airlines and hotels, did not say how the intrusion happened.

American Airlines Inc., which spun off Sabre in 2000 as an independent company and continues to rely on it for technology systems, said it checked its system after the reported breach and has found no indication that its own computers were hacked.

A foreign government could use the data to build profiles of U.S. officials, tracking their travel and establishing information that could be used to blackmail them.

Investigators are said to believe that the same Chinese-linked hackers are behind breaches at United Airlines and health insurer Anthem. The company added that it wasn’t aware that the incident had compromised sensitive protected information such as credit card data but wouldn’t be able to comment until the investigations were completed. So far, it was discovered that the same IP addresses used in the U.S. Office of Personnel Management were present in the American Airlines computer activity logs.

American is investigating whether or not hackers moved from Sabre’s techniques into its personal computer systems, two of the individuals acquainted with the examination stated. According to Bloomberg, both the airline and travel reservation firm Sabre appear to have been the subject of recent breaches. “There is also no evidence that customer data may have been compromised”, American Airlines spokesman Casey Norton said in an email response to media.

The development was first reported by Bloomberg News.

The current incident is the biggest attack on the travel industry in the U.S. and comes to light barely a week after a similar attack was waged on United Airlines, Tech Times reported.

The company spokesperson said that it had brought in outside security experts whose investigations found that there was no evidence of a breach like the ones involving Anthem or the Federal Office of Personnel Management earlier this year. “At this period of time, we are certainly not know this occurrence has structurally compromised delicate defend detail, for instance mastercard files or individually associated important information, but our researching is continual”.