World’s Biggest Cyber Heist

The world is waking up this morning to hear of one of the largest cyber heists to have ever occurred.

According to the Sunday Herald, an investigation (by the newspaper) revealed that on Thursday of this past week, “a previously unknown Indian hacker successfully breached the IT defences of the Best Western Hotel group’s online booking system and sold details of how to access it through an underground network operated by the Russian mafia. It is a move that has been dubbed the greatest cyber-heist in world history. The attack scooped up the personal details of every single customer that has booked into one of Best Western’s 1312 continental hotels since 2007.”

According to the newspaper, the information stolen contains addresses, names, credit card numbers and places of employment. The scare here is not just identify theft but even burglary crimes since addresses are associated with names.

DailyTech reports, “the unknown Indian hacker acquired login credentials to Best Western’s system after he installed a Trojan horse on one of its reservation computers — “The next time a member of staff logged in, her username and password were collected and stored,” reads the report.”

Although this story has just broke today, Best Western reports to have closed the hole on the hackers on Friday after being tipped off by the Sunday Herald.