Marriott Hack- 500m Data Records Exposed
Security experts alarmed by the scope of a data breach at the Marriott hotel empire worry that stolen information on specific hotel stays could be used for burglary, espionage or reputational attacks.
Hackers stole information on as many as 500 million guests of the Marriott hotel empire over four years, obtaining credit card and passport numbers and other personal data, including arrival and departure dates.
The crisis quickly emerged as one of the biggest data breaches on record. By comparison, last year’s Equifax hack affected more than 145 million people. A Target breach in 2013 affected more than 41 million payment card accounts and exposed contact information for more than 60 million customers.
Nearly 60 per cent of cyber-attacks target multiple components on an organisation's network, research from security firm Carbon Black states.
This supports the theory that breaches like Marriot Hotel Group hack, which involved criminals spending more than four years inside the company's system to steal 500 million customer data records over that time, may not be isolated attacks.
Tom Kellermann, chief cyber-security officer at Carbon Black said:
"It appears there had been unauthorised access to the Starwood network since 2014, demonstrating that attackers will get into an enterprise and attempt to remain undetected.
"A recent Carbon Black threat report found that nearly 60 per cent of attacks now involve lateral movement, which means attackers aren't just going after one component of an organisation - they're getting in, moving around and seeking more targets as they go."
Carbon Black's report also found that more than half of attackers now use their victim primarily for a practice known as "island hopping".
"In these campaigns, attackers first target an organisation's affiliates, often smaller companies with immature security postures and this can often be the case during a merger or acquisition," said Kellermann.
"This means that data at every point in the supply chain may be at risk, from customers, to partners and potential acquisitions."
Forrester analyst Enza Iannopollo has also called the Marriott breach an attack with "the potential to trigger the first hefty GDPR fine". "The ingredients are all here," said Iannopollo.
"The volume of personal data exfiltrated, more than 500 million customers, the sensitivity of the data, potentially including customers' passport details, name, address, and even encryption keys, and the length of the breach which started in 2014."
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