United Airlines Hacked by China

The hackers apparently lurked within United’s system for months prior to discovery. The hackers who hit both OPM and United shared a proclivity for engaging aliases culled from Marvel comic books.

Breitbart asks:

What, precisely, China plans to do with this bizarrely detailed model of American citizens remains to be seen, but investigators suspect their database is now augmented with a great deal of information about their travel arrangements. Business Insider relates theories that China is mapping out American business and government organizations to develop “infrastructure-killing cyber weapons.”

United Airlines is “one of the biggest contractors with the U.S. government among the airlines, making it a rich depository of data on the travel of American officials, military personnel and contractors.”

The entire Breitbart article is here.

Chinese attacks on United’s computer systems may have been guilty for recent computer faults that affected air travel and left thousands of passengers with delayed flights. However, the airline dismisses that line of thinking. They and the government quickly raced to assure the public that hacker were not blamable for those computer faults. It is not believed likely that the airline delays were measured acts of disruption, but people in the investigation of the United hack said it was possible that at least one of the system malfunctions could have been carelessly triggered by the database infiltration.

The Chinese government, par for the course, responded by formally declaring their government “never engages in any form of cyberattack,” and the Communist rulers in Beijing “firmly oppose any forms of cyberattacks.”

Right.