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Marriott, one of the largest hotel chains in the world, said Friday that the initial estimate of the number of people affected by the database leak of its reservation system was exaggerated. In addition, the company revealed that about 5.25 million unencrypted pbadport numbers were among the confidential data illegally obtained by unknown hackers.
According to the society, the initial number of 500 million victims was very high and probably fewer than 383 million people were actually affected. The revision of the number was done because, according to them, the system sometimes generates several records for a single client.
Nevertheless, the leak involving the booking system of its subsidiary Starwood Hotels is about to win the biggest leak title. personal data, exceeding by more than one hundred million the number of security incidents involving Equifax, occurring in 2017.
"The company has concluded with reasonable certainty that information from less than 383 million guests were involved in the leak, although the company is not able to quantify this number due to the nature of the data in the database, "he said in a statement.
In addition to pbadport data, the company has stored approximately 345,000 expired cards. . According to the company, this data has been encrypted and there is no indication that the decryption keys have been stolen.
A small number of "less than two thousand" cards may have been stored separately and in an unencrypted format. , according to Marriott. "The company continues to look at these numbers to better understand if they are payment card numbers and, if they are, the process we will put in place to help customers."
Marriott added that has completed the phasing out of the Starwood reservation system that allowed the leak.
There is speculation that China was involved in the leak. Reuters reported in December that there were suspicions of involvement in Beijing – and if it actually occurred, it was a crime of death. espionage and not a crime aimed at achieving financial gain.
Private investigators discovered "piracy tools, techniques and procedures" suggesting China's involvement, according to Reuters citing three anonymous sources.
The mid-term elections are already taking place in the country. and it is so that China has become the main concern of US authorities regarding state-sponsored cyberattacks. Hackers linked to the People's Liberation Army regularly carry out sophisticated attacks against US companies that attempt to steal trade secrets because of their economic and technological dominance over the United States.
Last month, charges were laid against two intelligence officials for alleged involvement in invasion campaigns against more than 45 companies, as well as against government agencies, including the Ministry of Finance. Energy and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
More:
• Marriott hotels network these hackers accessed data from 500 million guests
• hacked NASA and, at least this time, it does not appear that they are Brazilian
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