Hotel chain Marriott International confirmed about a new data breach in which the threat actor stole 20GB of files from one of its properties.
The attacker compromised the network at the BWI Airport Marriott Maryland (BWIA).
The threat actor said that they had accessed the Marriott property’s network about a month ago, they also added that the data exfiltrated included some credit card info and confidential information. The group shared screenshots of customer credit card authorization forms, including full card details.
The attackers notified numerous employees at Marriot about the security breach. The company initially responded to them, but later interrupted any communication.
The attackers claim they are an international group that doesn’t encrypt the data of their victims as they do not want to interfere with businesses, and they also do not attack governments or critical infrastructure.
According to a Marriott spokesperson, this incident only involved one property. The threat actor did not gain access to Marriott’s core network and the access to one device at the property involved only lasted for approximately six hours.
The threat actor tried to extort Marriot by threatening to leak the stolen files, but the company refused to pay a ransom and notified the authorities.
Marriott also hired a leading cyber security firm to investigate the security breach.
Marriott acknowledged that most of the data acquired were non-sensitive internal business files. However, they will be notifying approximately 300-400 individuals and any regulators, as required.
They did not provide a full description as to what kinds of personal information were involved for the individuals being notified.
This is not the first incident suffered by Marriot and it is the third data breach in 4 years. Some of the security breaches it was the victim of are
November 2018 – Starwood Data Breach – Hackers accessed the guest reservation system of the Marriot-owned Starwood since 2014 and copied and encrypted the information of about 327 million guests.
March 2021 – Marriott disclosed a security breach detected at the end of February 2020 that could impact up to 5.2 million of its guests.
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