UN aviation organization investigates IT security incident

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) of the United Nations is investigating a possible security incident that could be due to attackers targeting international organizations. The UN specialized agency announced this on its website and assured that the matter was being taken “very seriously”. Various security measures were initiated immediately, and the investigation is now underway. According to the news agency Reuters, the announcement follows allegations that thousands of ICAO records had been stolen.

Tens of thousands of data records allegedly stolen

There is a reference to the alleged attack on the cybersecurity company SOCRadar. It's team for monitoring activities on the dark web found a post in a forum on the weekend that talks about a leak from the ICAO. Allegedly, 42,000 documents containing personal data had been captured there. The data in question included names, birthdays, gender, addresses, telephone numbers, several email addresses, education levels and employment details held by the ICAO. However, the group of people in question is not specified. The ICAO did not explain this to the Reuters news agency. The ICAO has fewer than 1000 employees.

The ICAO has been existing for over 70 years, and its mission is to standardize civil aviation worldwide. The organization is based in Montreal, Canada. In 2016, the ICAO was the target of a devastating cyberattack that managers responsible for the counter-attack wanted to cover up, the Canadian broadcaster CBC reported six years ago. At the time, the suspected Chinese attackers had managed to attack other players in the aviation industry via the organization's infrastructure. In addition, the ICAO's email server had been compromised to access thousands of documents relating to current and former employees. The attack was never fully investigated.

(mho)