Australian airline Rex caught up in HWL Ebsworth hack

An Australian regional airline operator has reported that “confidential exchanges” between it and a client have been exposed as a part of a hack that saw the data of a raft of HWL Ebsworth’s clients impacted.

Regional Express – better known simply as Rex – made the announcement on 31 July.

“Regional Express (Rex) has been informed that its client’s lawyers, HWL Ebsworth Lawyers (HWLE), has been a victim of a cyber attack,” Rex said in a statement. “The incident resulted in the theft of data relating to confidential exchanges between Rex’s subsidiary and its client.”

The airline’s daily operations remain unaffected, and Rex currently believes that passenger details have not been affected.

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Rex is now waiting on HWL Ebsworth for more details of what data exactly has been exposed.

“Rex is now requesting for evaluation of the documents that have been stolen from HWLE’s servers to determine the extent of potential damages to Rex’s interests,” the airline said. At the moment, Rex has put both HWL Ebsworth and the affected client “on notice” regarding further damages caused by the breach.

The HWL Ebsworth attack occurred in April. Russian state-backed hacking syndicate ALPHV (also known as BlackCat) claimed responsibility, and since then, a number of major companies – including the big four banks, as well as government agencies and authorities such as the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) – reporting they have had data exposed through the incident.

Rex is Australia’s largest regional airline.

David Hollingworth

David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.