The Associated Press reports via USA Today that thieves managed to obtain passwords of 10,000 custom

The Associated Press reports via USA Today that thieves managed to obtain passwords of 10,000 customer accounts and use their frequent flier miles. Word got out Monday about the hackers when the airlines began emailing several thousand customers who were affected by the breach.
Cyber attackers broke into accounts so they could steal miles, book flights, and arrange upgrades. Some accounts with American Airlines were frozen and those customers were issued new AAdvantage frequent-flier numbers.
avis car rental United spokesman, Luke Punzenberger, avis car rental says that hackers were able to access about three dozen accounts and make fraudulent transactions with customers MileagePlus miles. The airline informed victims of the breach that they would restore their stolen miles. Punzenberger further says that United is now requiring all customers enter their MileagePlus avis car rental numbers when logging into their accounts.
American avis car rental spokeswoman, Martha Thomas, says that 10,000 accounts avis car rental were affected, but it wasn t specified if that was the number of accounts avis car rental with unauthorized transactions. The airlines are offering avis car rental to pay for a credit-watch service for customers whose accounts have been compromised, Thomas tells Associated Press .
AP adds in its report that when news got out about the security breach, the two airlines were quick to say that nobody hacked their systems avis car rental — that thieves got usernames and passwords somewhere else and tried to use them to log into American s AAdvantage and United s MileagePlus, hoping that the log-in information would be the same. They said that other information such as entire credit-card numbers avis car rental was not exposed.
Delta has already started preventative measures avis car rental in avoiding hacking by having customers use longer, more complicated passwords versus 4-digit passwords. Philly.com reports in-depth that the airline detected an attempt of fraudulent activity late last year. Delta s spokesman, Anthony Black, says that none of the attempts were successful as far as the airline knows.