EasyJet has admitted that a “highly sophisticated cyber-attack” has affected approximately nine million customers.

It said email addresses and travel details had been stolen and that 2,208 customers had also had their credit card details “accessed”. The firm has informed the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office while it investigates the breach. EasyJet first became aware of the attack in January. It told the BBC that it was only able to notify customers whose credit card details were stolen in early April. “This was a highly sophisticated attacker. It took time to understand the scope of the attack and to identify who had been impacted,” the airline told the BBC. “We could only inform people once the investigation had progressed enough that we were able to identify whether any individuals have been affected, then who had been impacted and what information had been accessed.”(BBC)…[+]

World Health Organization (WHO) member states have agreed to set up an independent inquiry into the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. The resolution, approved without objection by the WHO’s 194-member annual assembly meeting virtually in Geneva, also allows for the inquiry to look into the health body’s own role.

The United States in particular has been highly critical of its response. The EU presented the resolution on behalf of 100 nations. It calls for an “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” of the international response.

This will also focus on the WHO’s “timelines pertaining to the Covid-19 pandemic”. The body has faced criticism that it was late to declare a health emergency. The resolution also calls for the world to ensure “transparent, equitable and timely access” to any treatments or vaccines, and pushes for the WHO to investigate the “source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population”. “As I see no requests for the floor, I take it that there is no objection and the resolution is therefore adopted,” declared the assembly’s president, Keva Bain, the Bahamas ambassador.(BBC)…[+]

Facebook will pay a multi-million dollar penalty for making “false” privacy claims in Canada. The C$9m ($6.5m; £5.3m) fine is part of a settlement over the company’s handling of users’ personal information between August 2012 and June 2018. Canada’s independent Competition Bureau said the tech firm improperly shared data with third-party developers.

Facebook says it “did not agree” with the finding but wants to resolve the matter. On Tuesday, Canada’s Competition Bureau announced the tech giant will pay the penalty after concluding “the company made false or misleading claims about the privacy of Canadians’ personal information on Facebook and [messaging app] Messenger”. The competition watchdog said it found that Facebook’s privacy claims were not consistent with the way it shared personal dataof users with some third-party developers. A Facebook spokesperson told Reuters that “although we do not agree with the Commissioner’s conclusions, we are resolving this matter by entering into a consent agreement and not contesting the conclusions for the purposes of this agreement”.(BBC)…[+]