MAG breach hits 8.7 million passengers, and nobody's said how

Manchester Airports Group, which owns Stansted, Manchester and East Midlands airports, has confirmed hackers accessed customer data belonging to roughly 8.7 million people. That figure alone makes it one of the largest UK aviation breaches on record, bigger than British Airways' 2018 incident that cost it a £20m ICO fine. What's missing is the mechanism: no confirmed ransomware group, no stated entry point, no timeline for when the intrusion started versus when it was detected. Airports sit on passport numbers, travel itineraries and payment data all at once, which makes them a richer target than most retailers and a slower one to fully audit. Expect the ICO to open a formal inquiry within weeks given the scale, and expect MAG's cyber insurance premiums to move regardless of fault.