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Was The Omni Hotel Chain Hacked?
Omni Hotels & Resorts has reported that point-of-sale systems at some of its hotel locations were attacked by malware targeting payment card information.
The hacking of the systems of the luxury hotel chain follows similar breaches of point-of-sale systems at various hotels and retailers like Hyatt Hotels, Target, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Hilton Worldwide Holdings.
Omni — in Dallas, Texas — said in a statement Friday that on May 30 this year, it discovered it was hit by malware attacks on its network, affecting specific POS systems on-site at some of its properties. “The malware was designed to collect certain payment card information, including cardholder name, credit/debit card number, security code and expiration date,” Omni said. There isn’t evidence that other customer information, such as contact information, Social Security numbers or PINs, was compromised, it added.
The chain did not disclose how many of its 60 properties were affected and the likely number of cardholders that could have been affected. As there is no indication that reservation or select guest membership systems were affected, users were unlikely to be affected unless they physically presented their payment card at a POS system at one of the affected locations. The malware may have been in operation between Dec. 23 last year and June 14 this year, although most of the systems were affected during a shorter timeframe, according to the hotel.
The hotel chain, which operates hotels and resorts in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, could not be immediately reached for comment over the weekend for further details.
Omni said after discovering the malware attack, it had immediately hired IT investigation and security firms and has now contained the intrusion. It did not specify why it had delayed to inform customers.
Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/omni-hotels-reports-hacking.html
Is B.Y.O.D Proving To Be A Headache?
May 29, 2012 by admin
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IT managers trying to cope with the growing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend can expect to see an explosion in the number of smartphones and tablets used by employees in the next few years.
As a result, IT shops won’t be able to provide the security necessary to protect company data, says Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney.
“The number of devices coming in the next few years will outstrip IT’s ability to keep the enterprise secure,” he said, adding that IT workers are “going crazy” and “get into fights” over whether users should have upgrades.
To help IT cope, software vendors should create what Dulaney called “beneficial viruses” that could be embedded in corporate data carried on mobile devices. These software tools would require users to have licenses in order to access files, just as digital rights management technology does with music and video files.
Beneficial viruses would also “be smart enough” to delete the sensitive data if a device is lost or stolen, or if data winds up on an unauthorized device, Dulaney said, adding, “It’s time for the SAPs and Oracles to begin thinking about doing that, and it’s a lot harder than we think.”
Today, IT shops use mobile device management software to monitor which mobile users are authorized to access applications and whether they can access the data outside the corporate cloud.
Fed Contractor Arrested For Software Theft
January 28, 2012 by admin
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Bo Zhang worked at the bank and took advantage of his position to commit the crime, according to prosecutors, and was arrested yesterday by the FBI and the Treasury Department.
“As today’s case demonstrates, our cyber infrastructure is vulnerable not only to cybercriminals and hackers, but also alleged thieves like Bo Zhang who used his position as a contract employee to steal government intellectual property,” said Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara.
“Fighting cyber crime is one of the top priorities of this office and we will aggressively pursue anyone who puts our computer security at risk.”
A complaint against Zhang has been unsealed and according to that he pilfered the Government-Wide Accounting and Reporting Program code by copying it to a hard drive owned by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Kindle Fire Raises Privacy Concerns
December 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Amazon told a Massachusetts congressman that the Silk browser in its Kindle Fire tablet doesn’t pose a privacy threat to customers, but the lawmaker wasn’t satisfied with that statement.
U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the co-chairman of a congressional caucus on consumer privacy, on Tuesday released the results of questions he had put to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in October about Silk and the data it collected.
Markey wasn’t happy with Amazon’s answers.
“Amazon’s responses to my inquiries do not provide enough detail about how the company intends to use customer information, beyond acknowledging that the company uses this valuable information,” said Markey in a statement.
“Amazon states ‘Customer information is an important part of our business,’ but it is also important for customers to know how the company uses their personal information,” Markey continued. “Amazon is collecting a massive amount of information about Kindle Fire users, and it has a responsibility to be transparent with its customers. I plan to follow-up with the company for additional answers on this issue.”
Silk, which is based on the open-source WebKit engine, connects to Amazon’s cloud service and servers by default. The service will handle much of the work of composing Web pages, pre-rendering and pre-fetching content, and squeezing the size of page components, a way, claimed Amazon, to speed up browsing on low-powered devices like the Kindle Fire.
Hackers Attempt To Access AT&T Mobile
November 30, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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AT&T Inc, the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier, said it is investigating an “organized and systemic attempt” to access mobile customers’ information but that it did not believe any accounts were breached.
The company, which had 100 million subscribers at the end of the third quarter, said it is advising less than 1 percent of its wireless customers that there was an attempt to obtain information about their accounts.
It said that the parties involved appeared to have used “auto script” technology to see if AT&T telephone numbers were linked to online AT&T accounts.
Spokesman Mark Siegel said AT&T’s “investigation is ongoing to determine the source or intent of the attempt to gather this information.”
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