UK airport hackers access data of 8.7m people

Hackers demanded a ransom from Manchester Airports Group this week after accessing the data of roughly 8.7 million customers across three of England's busiest airports, and the company says it refused to pay.

MAG, which owns Manchester, London Stansted, and East Midlands airports, discovered the breach on Tuesday; however, it seems that the data breach occurred several days ago.

The breached data consists of two categories. The majority of the data includes email addresses that were gathered using Wi-Fi login services.

The other category of data includes phone numbers, vehicle registration, and postcodes of the customers who have used MAG’s car parking services.

No financial or banking information was stored in the infected computer system, according to MAG, and the company has put its online service Manage My Booking is on hold for the time being.

Even though the volume of data leaked is rather impressive, according to MAG, there is no threat to passenger safety or any other kind of risk related to the security of the airlines' operations.

Three airports served over 65 million passengers last year, meaning that only part of them used these services.

Michael Goddard, 71, from Cheshire, told BBC Radio Manchester he and his wife both received breach notification emails after using East Midlands Airport and booking Manchester Airport parking earlier this year.

And he was unconvinced that MAG’s assurance of security was sufficient in light of the information that hackers have his postcode and name. While MAG states that it knows the identity of the hacker and has informed the relevant authorities, it has not revealed the identity of the hacking organisation.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has acknowledged that it has received a notification of the security breach and is looking into the matter.