Hacker attack: data from 500 million hotel guests stolen

The Marriott hotel chain are the data of up to half a billion guests in the daughter brand, Starwood has been stolen. In the case of 327 million hotel guests it is a matter of information, such as name, E-Mail addresses, postal addresses, passport numbers, date of birth, as well as the stay period, the company said. The Hacker had captured some of the guests, including encrypted credit card data. Marriott has not been able to exclude the possibility that the files had been stolen, to decrypt the data needed.

Unauthorized access to the Starwood database already existed in 2014, as Marriott said. To belong to the Starwood houses, among other things, Westin, Sheraton, Le Méridien, St. Regis and W Hotels. Marriott had bought Starwood 2016 for $ 13.6 billion – and thus obviously also the security vulnerability at the same time. The IT systems, Starwood will now be retired.

First indications of an attack on the Starwood database came at the beginning of September by an internal security system, according to Marriott. The investigation found that “an unauthorized party had copied information and encrypted”. 19. November Marriott can decrypt the information and determine that they came from the Starwood database for guest reservations.

The authorities had been turned on, it said. The company has set up a Website and a call centre, to which guests can turn to, which could be affected. From Friday to Marriott will also E-mail to those who send, and the data are affected.

In the past years, there had been hackers attacks, with hundreds of millions Affected. The record of the Internet group Yahoo, in the case of the unknown attacker gained in 2013, access to data of all three billion user accounts. The name, E-Mail addresses, telephone numbers, and an obscured passwords.

eBay came hack in a in may 2014, the known attack data from around 145 million customers, including E-Mail and residential addresses, and Login information. A Hack of the POS systems in the US, the super market operator Target was credit card data of 110 million customers to the prey.