Marriott Hotels & Resorts International based in Bethesda, Maryland suffered a data breach. An unnamed hacking group claimed to have stolen approximately 20GB of data including personal and credit card details of guests.
According to a Marriott spokesperson, “the company is aware of a threat actor who used social engineering to trick one associate at a single Marriott hotel into providing access to the associate’s computer.”
The access “only occurred for a short amount of time on one day. Marriott identified and was investigating the incident before the threat actor contacted the company in an extortion attempt, which Marriott did not pay”’ he added.
Exposing Information of Hotel Guests and Employees
The incident involves access to around 20 GB of files, which included credit card information and confidential information about guests and workers from an employee at the BWI Airport Marriott in Baltimore.
The reports say the attackers “emailed numerous employees” at Marriott about the breach, and had been in at least limited communications with Marriott.
The attack vector involved the hackers tricking a Marriott associate into giving access to the associate’s computer through ‘social engineering.
The attackers provided Data breaches, samples of the documents they claimed to have stolen, and screenshots posted to the site state to verify reservation logs for airline crew members from January 2022 and credit card authorization forms.
According to data breaches, which first reported the attack, the hackers have documents detailing names and other details of guests, as well as credit card information used to make bookings.
The company confirmed the breach to data breaches, but said the information stolen was mostly “non-sensitive business files”. Also, they have informed between 300-400 affected parties, as well as relevant data protection watchdogs and law enforcement agencies.
Marriott’s Data Breaches in the Past
Earlier, in November 2018, Marriott suffered serious data breaches in the past. The hack involved the theft of data relating to some 500 million customers and was later linked to Chinese state-sponsored hackers, a claim the Chinese government denied.
Marriott suffered yet another data breach believed to have involved data that includes the PII of some 5.2 million guests and is believed to have been accessed by an unknown third party using the login credentials of two employees at a group hotel operated as a franchise.
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