Motel One said the incident was now being investigated and said it had a “relatively minor” impact Photo: picture alliance / Schoening
From BZ
The “Motel One” chain is struggling with a huge data leak. Almost complete lists of overnight stays from the years since 2016 are said to have ended up on the Internet.
The data set comprises almost six terabytes, reports the “Southgerman newspaper(SZ).
The data should include names and travel dates of customers, even billing addresses and dates of birth; In addition, individual cell phone numbers of employees. They came from so-called emergency lists that the chain’s hotels create every day, according to the SZ.
The hotel group based in Munich confirmed the hacker attack on September 30th on the online network X (formerly Twitter). According to SZ, the hacker group ALPHV claimed responsibility for the attack, which was supposedly intended to extort money.
When asked by the newspaper, Motel One said that the incident was being investigated by IT security experts. A criminal complaint was also filed. The company’s website states: Unknown people “infiltrated the hotel operator’s internal systems and probably tried to carry out a so-called ransomware attack.”
The chain’s founder and co-owner, Dieter Müller, whose data was also published in the leak, called on politicians to significantly upgrade cyber defenses in view of the massive data leak. (knu)