Marriott International – data breach affecting 500 million customers

3. December 2018

Marriott International Inc., the world’s largest hotel company, was hit by a data breach affecting up to 500 million customers.

Marriott said it has found a data breach in the Starwood guest reservation database regarding the hotels ‘Westin’, ‘Sheraton’, ‘Le Méridien’, ‘St. Regis’ and ‘W Hotels’. The main brand Marriott does not belong to it. Marriot had bought its competitor Starwood in 2016 and thus obviously their security gap at the same time.

Up to 500 million customers may have been affected by the breach and, of those impacted, roughly two-thirds had their names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers and duration of stay compromised. It is also possible that payment card information were caught in the breach.

An internal tool alerted a potential data breach on September 8th, 2018. An investigation subsequently initiated revealed that the guest database may have been compromised since 2014. At the moment Marriott could not rule out the possibility that the files needed for decryption had also been stolen. This would mean that the attackers could also use the stolen data to, for example, shop with them.

As a result, Starwood’s IT systems will be phased out.

Since Friday, those affected have also been informed and customer can find out more on the website.