Trump hotels hacked, credit card data at risk
The Trump Hotel Collection (THC) is a conglomerate of lodge properties owned by US Presidential candidate Donald Trump, and in a current assertion on its company web site, the group has acknowledged a knowledge breach that concerned seven of its resorts.
Trump worldwide Hotel Las Vegas is among several Trump hotels that may have been the target of a data breach.
The hotel chain has warned that anybody who stayed at certain Trump Hotel locations in Chicago, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Toronto, Miami, and New York between May 19 and June 2 of this year may have had their credit card data exposed to hackers.
Trump Hotels continued: “For customers that used credit or debit cards to make purchases between May 19, 2014, and June 2, 2015, we believe that the malware may have affected payment card data including payment card account number, card expiration date and security code”.
Hotel boss Trump is the first choice of 21 percent of Republican primary voters according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll. The latest hotels to join the list of victims: Hilton Hotels and Trump Hotels.
Now, aside from the notice put up by the hotel chain, letters have been dispatched to customers warning them of the malware and the compromise of credit card information and cardholder names.
Like virtually every other company these days, we have been alerted to potential suspicious credit card activity and are in the midst of a thorough investigation to determine whether it involves any of our properties.
So, at most, this hack will be an inconvenience to any victims. The memory-scraping malware was reportedly tough to detect, not just because it obtained card data at the moment a card got swiped, but also because it encrypted card data before exfiltrating it to attackers. “In the case of Trump Hotels, the bigger the name on the door, the bigger the target”.
The hotel chain is offering one year of free identity fraud protection to affected customers.
“We’re at a point where I’m no longer surprised when a breach is announced”, said for Softpedia Kevin Watson, CEO of Netsurion, a provider of remotely-managed network and data security services for multi-location businesses.