Chain of hotels owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide properties faced a data breach earlier this year and hackers got access of debit and credit card details of hotels’ customers.
The breach also included two hotels from New Jersey, The Sheraton Atlantic City Convention Center Hotel and W Hoboken; both the hotels faced the breach in different months. Sheraton’s data breach took place between Nov. 7, 2014, and May. 6, 2015 and W Hoboken between March 2 and April 15.
Investigating on how the attacks were carried out, it was found that a malicious software affected hotels’ restaurants, gift shops and another point of sale. But, guest reservation and membership systems weren’t affected by the attacks.
Commenting on the malware the officials from the company said:
“The malware was designed to collect certain payment card information, including cardholder name, payment card number, security code and expiration date. There is no evidence that other customer information, such as contact information or PINs, were affected by this issue.”
Starwood hired some security experts for looking into their systems and after looking into the systems they declared malware to be “no longer a threat,” reports the NJ.
For already leaked information the company is coordinating with the payment card firms to keep all their customers secure.
If you are interested in going through the full list of affected hotels here’s the list.
Targeting hotel business is the easiest way to steal customers’ personal details such as credit card numbers, full names, email addresses and permanent addresses. Apart from using stolen credit cards, the cyber criminals can further use your personal information for identity theft and other online scams.
In the past, hotels owned by Donald Trump in New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Miami and Chicago also faced a massive credit card data breach.
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