Air India frequent flier miles hacked

Unidentified individuals hacked into the loyalty program of at least 20 accounts at Air India to steal nearly $24,000 worth of frequent flier miles.

The intruders succeeded in creating 20 email IDs to hijack the reward points earned by Air India passengers.

As a number of the phony tickets were bought using invalid IDs and were signed with the same signature, Delhi Police suspect the involvement of an insider familiar with security loopholes. The airline has suspended the fraudulent IDs and deactivated accounts holding identical user names and passwords.

The full extent of the incursion is still unknown.

Several other airlines have suffered similar incidents, including British Airways, American Airlines and United Airlines. Two white hat hackers who notified United Airlines of security holes in its technology systems were each rewarded, under the airline's bug bounty program, with a million frequent-flier miles, enough for several first-class trips to Asia.