Carnival Cruise Breach-- Again - ThreatWire

By Shannon Morse, ThreatWire 

According to a data breach notification letter, Carnival Corp, the worlds largest cruise ship operator, was hit by a breach to a number of email accounts and portions of it’s IT systems. This breach appears to have occurred in Mid-March when an unauthorized third party gained access to data. Personal information for some guests, employees, and crew were affected - that includes names, addresses, phone numbers, passport numbers, date of birth, health info, and few some folks affected, social security numbers or national IDs. It also included COVID testing data. Carnival states evidence that shows a low likelihood of the data being misused.

Carnival Corps operates cruise lines including Carnival, Princess, Holland America, Seabourn, and more. Given how huge this business is and the large amount of data they collect on guests, it comes as no surprise that they’re continually targeted. Yes, this is not the first time. The company has been in the news many times over the past year due to being a target in cyberattacks - with two of those being ransomware related, four events total. The timing of this attack is unsurprising as well, given people are now booking trips now that cruise liners and airports are allowing more travel.

We do have questions about this attack though. Carnival brands have 150,000 employees in 150 countries, and have 13 million guests each year. How many of those were affected? While their letter says they detected this breach on March 19, it doesn’t disclose how long the criminal had access during this Mid-March timeframe?  How is Carnival amping up their cybersecurity, given this is yet another time in the past 15 months they’ve been targeted? That’s concerning. Carnival Corp has stated they are “continuing to review security and privacy policies and procedures and has been implementing changes as needed to enhance our information security and privacy program and controls.” Are they working with a third party cybersecurity org or investigating these breaches?

https://threatpost.com/carnival-cruise-cyberattack/167065/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/carnival-cruise-hit-by-data-breach-warns-of-data-misuse-risk/ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20949884-carnival-march-bc-data-breach-notice

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