NEW DELHI, 22 May, 2021, (TON): A major cyber-attack has hit Air India, in which personal data of millions of customers has been compromised. 

India's national airline Air India has said a cyber-attack on its data servers affected about 4.5 million customers around the world. 

The national carrier issued a statement on Friday informing its passengers that its SITA PSS server, which is responsible for storing and processing the personal information of fliers, was subject to a cybersecurity attack. The resultant data breach involved personal data registered between August 26, 2011 and February 20, 2021.    

The breach was first reported to the company in February. Details including passport and ticket information as well as credit-card data were compromised.  

Personal data — including name, date of birth, contact information, passport information, ticket information, and credit card data — which was registered between August 11, 2011, and February 3, 2021, has been leaked of a certain number of Air India’s passengers, the statement issued by the airline said. 

Air India said no subsequent unauthorized activity had been detected. 

It is not immediately clear who was behind the attack. 

Last year, British Airways was fined £20m ($26m) for a data breach that affected personal and credit card data of more than 400,000 customers in 2018.  

The cyber-attack has also affected passengers of other airlines such as Malaysia Airlines, Finnair, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, and Cathay Pacific.