Mandarin Oriental Publically Confesses Security Breach

The register.co.uk reported on 6th March, 2015 stating that Mandarin Oriental, a world famous up-market hotel chain, has claimed responsibility to a nasty credit card security breach and said that it has come to know about the breach from a third party.

Brian Krebs, Independent Security blogger of Krebsonsecurity.com discovered facts of a breach on 4th March, 2015 which might have happened just before Christmas 2014 before removing the hitch from the website.

Company officials investigated the breach and confirmed that the cyberattack contained "undetectable" malware on some of its systems which did not compromise any personal information except credit card data. Mandarin Oriental operates a series of high-end hotels across the world in cities like Miami, Barcelona, Boston, Paris and London. However, the company said that it has removed the unnamed malware from its systems and continuing the probe.

The company said that they protect customer's information seriously but unfortunately these types of incidents are happening increasingly which is a matter of concern and hence we have also cautioned our technology peers in the hospitality industry.

The company is not identifying the specific hotels which were victimized in breach and only saying that the infected hotels are in Europe and US and none of the hotels in Asia were struck. It was also not known where about of the malware means whether it was on point-of-sale systems or in the internal network of the hotel. The company said that it has engaged security experts from outside to investigate the attack.

Subsequently, anyone who stayed at a Mandarin Oriental hotel is advised to monitor activity on their card and inform the issuing financial institution immediately if any unauthorized activity is seen.

Security experts from outside advised Mandarin to keep an eye following the breach notification email to keep its wealthy clients on side.

Theregister.co.uk published news on 6th March, 2015 quoting Mark James, Security Specialist of anti-virus firm ESET, as saying "Mandarin Oriental will need to restrict the spreading of this breach as rapidly and proficiently as possible. Information is the key in this case and communicating that to those affected as quickly and briefly as possible will assist to keep its standing and retaining its customers."

» SPAMfighter News - 3/20/2015