The personal information of up to six million Qantas customers has been stolen by criminals after they convinced an employee at one of the airline’s call centres to grant them access to its database.

The attack on the country’s biggest airline comes amid a wave of similar breaches at North American carriers, including Hawaiian Airlines. Those incidents prompted the FBI to warn this week that a criminal organisation known as Scattered Spider was responsible for “ongoing and rapidly evolving” attack, warning companies not to pay ransoms.