A team of Israeli cybercrime researchers has revealed that Russian hackers have put up the Pakistan International Airlines’ (PIA) network access and database for sale on the dark web.

The firm KELA has not reported the incident to PIA directly due to the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries and made it public through relevant mediums instead.

According to KELA’s spokesperson they have been tracking the threat actor who published the domain access to PIA’s network for sale last week. He mentioned the possibility of a cryptoware attack on organizations whose network access has been put up on the dark web like this.

“Most of the time, we’re seeing cyber-criminals purchase these initial accesses to gain an initial foothold into the victim’s network, from which they can then perform the lateral movement to advance their access privileges and potentially employ ransomware or some other type of attack,” the spokesperson said.

“The actor mentioned that what he is selling includes around fifteen databases, all with different amounts of record — some around 500,000 records and some around 60,000–50,000 records — but that all the records stored in their network are included,” he added.