Hyatt and Starwood hotel chains suffer credit card breach
19 hotels with point-of-sale kiosks have been affected by the malware infection.
HEI, the holding company behind a wide number of hotel brands including Marriott and (wait for it) Hyatt, has announced that it suffered a data breach via its payment tools. According to the outfit, hackers installed malware inside payment processing systems that harvested data at point-of-sale kiosks at 19 locations in the US. Specifically, those who made card purchases at specific restaurants, gift shops or spas between March 2015 and July 2016. In total, around 8,000 transactions are likely to be affected, with people's credit card numbers and addresses potentially at risk.
The company has posted a list of which hotels were targeted, which includes Marriott, Hyatt, Intercontinental, LeMeridien, Renaissance, Sheraton and Westin branches. If you think you've been affected, the company advises you to contact your credit card provider and inform them of the situation. In addition, HEI has pledged that its systems are now clean and that its replacement payment processing system is significantly safer than before. Still, when sweating the cost of that $5 bag of chips, you'd never have thought the price would have climbed even higher.
