The Trump Hotel Collection through its legal house Norton Rose Fullbright has warned in a letter to customers that malware was found in its payment card systems operating between 19 May and 2 June.
Advertisement
With the notice issued on its website, the hotel warned that POS systems at seven hotels – in Chicago, Las Vegas, New York, Miami, Honolulu and Toronto – were all potentially infected with malware. But the company isn’t quite sure if the hackers managed to pull out that data from the computer system.
The Trump Hotel Collection is owned by real-estate mogul and current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump.
This makes us consider that the incident was the results of a malware contamination of the motels’ Point of Sale (PoS) units, which allowed hackers to steal bank card knowledge in actual time with out their victims ever noticing.
The company is also offering one year of fraud resolution and identity protection services to customers whose information may have been exposed. “In the case of Trump Hotels, the bigger the name on the door, the bigger the target”. This latest incident affected Trump SoHo New York, Trump National Doral, Trump worldwide New York, Trump global Chicago, Trump global Waikiki, Trump global Hotel & Tower Las Vegas, and Trump worldwide Toronto. Security blogger Brian Krebs first reported that multiple banks reported seeing payment card fraud from at least April 21 to July 27 at restaurant and gift-shop POS systems in numerous Hilton locations, as well as at the company’s Embassy Suites, Doubletree, Hampton Inn and Suites, and Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts. “A compromised password, malware on a laptop used at home and at work, a phishing attack that looks too real to pass up – these are all viable ways networks with top quality security are breached every day”, also noted Mr. Watson.
“An independent forensic investigation has not conclusively determined that any particular customer’s payment card information was taken”, the company stated.
Advertisement
Questions hotel guests need to be asking themselves now include: is it safe to use a credit card at a hotel?
