Hackers Broke into Destination Hotels Credit Card Processing System
The payment processing system belonging to Destination Hotels, a hotel chain of high-end resort hotels, was hacked with the use of malware, compromising guests' credit card information.
Credit card fraud is bad enough on its own without a hacker breaking into a system that stores your personal information. Recently, the point-of-sale system of Destination Hotels was broken into by hackers where they stole credit card numbers of guests who have stayed at 21 of the high-class resort's 30 hotels. Destination Hotels is known for relatively expensive and high-class resorts located in places like Lake Tahoe, California; Vail, Colorado; and even Maui, Hawaii.
The hacking incident is currently being investigated by the FBI (U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation). So far the FBI has uncovered a malicious software program used by a remote source to penetrate the credit card processing system.
After the discovery of the hack, Destination Hotels begun notifying victims of the situation but have not released information about how many people were affected by the breach.
Researchers believe that only the point-of-sale system (where credit cards are swiped for purchases) was compromised which contains guests' credit card number. Some time ago, a similar attack took place where Wyndam Hotel's system was breached and hackers made off with thousands of credit card numbers from the hotel chain's guests.
Once hackers find a way to break into one system for the purpose of stealing credit card numbers, they continue to repeat the process with other vulnerable systems until they are caught. It is feels as if we're fighting a losing battle against credit card fraud. Last year, in the U.S. alone, there were hundreds of thousands of reports of internet crime, according to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center's annual report, which a large percentage was was related to credit card fraud cases.
It is not surprising to see hackers target a hotel chain such as Destination Hotels considering many of the guest must be able to afford the high-end resort fees and therefore have a relatively high credit limit on credit card accounts that are compromised. Remember, hackers always have a purpose for attacking something. In this case, like the majority of them, the main purpose is for monetary gain.
As you can see, the tool used by hackers to compromise credit card information on Destination Hotel's system was malware, a malicious software created to remotely hack the system and find its vulnerability.