Pierluigi Paganini
February 05, 2025
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, is investigating a significant data breach that has raised concerns about the security of its systems and employees data. In the updated statement published by ICAO, the agency said it is “actively investigating reports of a potential information security incident allegedly linked to a threat actor known for targeting international organizations.”
This comes after an individual claimed in a January 5 post on a popular hacking forum to have accessed 42,000 documents from ICAO, including personal information (PII).
“ICAO has confirmed that the reported information security incident involves approximately 42,000 recruitment application data records from April 2016 to July 2024 claimed to be released by the threat actor known as Natohub.” reads the statement published by the International Civil Aviation Organization. “After completing careful review of the data, ICAO can now confirm that 11,929 individuals are affected. ICAO is now reaching out to these individuals.”
From this perspective, the actors were interested not in disrupting specific IT/OT processes, but in acquiring targeted intelligence about specific individuals and their digital identity information. Such tactics are pertinent to traditional espionage and human intelligence (HUMINT), where cyberspace is a key channel for obtaining interest data. After completing a careful review of the data, ICAO confirmed that 11,929 individuals were affected. The compromised data includes recruitment-related information that applicants entered into the compromised system, such as names, email addresses, dates of birth, and employment history.
Shortly after the ICAO incident, Resecurity identified threat actors targeting the ACAO (Arab Civil Aviation Organization). As a result of a successful SQL injection exploitation in a vulnerable web application, records of staff/members and their credentials were exfiltrated. Multiple victims identified in the stolen data set included Safety Aviation Specialists and Incident Investigators. Such experts have a first-hand knowledge from the field and may be involved in sensitive communications. Traditional cybercriminal actors would not be interested in it due to the relatively low probability of monetization for profit via Dark Web markets, besides the opportunity to sell it to state-sponsored actors looking for specific targets of interest. Considering the tight timing of the recently disclosed ICAO incident, such a trend of targeting (international aviation organizations) is concerning.
Resecurity has notified the affected agency and shared the acquired data dump, which resulted from threat actors’ investigation. The data breach has not been previously disclosed. While specific details about the nature of the leaked data and the extent of the breach remain unclear, the incident highlights ongoing vulnerabilities within aviation organizations. The observed data set includes logins (usernames), hashes of passwords, emails, titles, and communications. Similar to the ICAO incident, the data has been leaked via one of the popular Dark Web communities on February 4, 2024.
The leaked data set identified representatives of the Qatar Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation Unit (QAAI), the Aviation Investigation Bureau (AIB) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Iran Civil Aviation Authority, the Jordan Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission (CARC), and various members of the Aviation Accident Investigation Division (AAID).
Notably, last year was extremely challenging due to the number of significant aviation incidents, some of which triggered a complicated geopolitical narrative based on the circumstances and the root cause investigation. The correlation with the newly disclosed malicious cyber activity targeting aviation safety experts at the beginning of Q1 2025 creates a precedent. It requires increased attention to protecting critical infrastructure and relevant organizations.
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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO))
