Marriott International revealed that it has fallen victim to a hack which exposed over 500 million guests. While Marriott discovered the breach this week, the hackers have reportedly had access to the hotel chain’s guest reservation system since 2014. Personal information such has phone numbers, email addresses, and passport details have been compromised for over 300 million accounts. For millions, credit card information has also been stolen in an encrypted state. It is unknown whether attackers have been able to decrypt this credit card information.
In their public apology, Marriott has promised to email all guests affected by this data breach concerning methods of damage control. Marriott has set up an informational website and call center regarding the breach. It has also promised to provide compromised guests with free membership to a personal information monitoring service called WebWatcher.
This marks the second largest corporate data breach in history, behind Yahoo’s 2017 data breach that hit nearly 3 billion accounts. Due to the international nature of the data breach reaching to the EU and UK, Marriott will most likely be hit with a sizeable penalty from the GDPR.
If you have stayed at a Marriott hotel between the years of 2014 and 2018 or otherwise have reason to believe you have been affected, do not hesitate to reach out to one of Marriott’s support services for more information.
As always, stay safe out there.
Jake Malony,
On behalf of the staff at PJ-Networks.
