It seems that the Mandarin Oriental Group has suffered a nasty incident where credit card numbers have been compromised in a “hack”.
The breach a number of hotels in the US and Europe – with hotels in Asia unaffected.
From the PR, it seems some Malware has been injected into the Point of Sales systems. This seems to have lifted the credit card numbers.
The group states:
Mandarin Oriental can confirm that the credit card systems in an isolated number of our hotels in the US and Europe have been accessed without authorization and in violation of both civil and criminal law. The Group has identified and removed malware and is coordinating with credit card agencies, law enforcement authorities and forensic specialists to ensure that all necessary steps are taken to fully protect our guests and our systems across our portfolio. We take the protection of customer information very seriously. Unfortunately incidents of this nature are increasingly becoming an industry-wide concern and we have therefore also alerted our technology peers in the hospitality industry.
Mandarin Oriental is moving to secure their systems. Meanwhile the hotel group states:
We can confirm that only an isolated number of hotels in the US and Europe have been affected. Moreover, from the information we have to date, the breach has only affected credit card data and not any other personal guest data, and credit card security codes have not been compromised.
– http://www.mandarinoriental.com/media/press-releases/statement-relating-to-credit-card-breach.aspx
The hotel group is advising people to keep an eye on their statements, and remote any irregualites to their credit card issuer.
Krebs on Security as usual has done an excellent analysis on the subject, with indications that Mandarin Oriental’s locations in the US have been hit, with the incident going back to December 2014.
There is also the posturing that this incident did not hit the front desk systems, but just the point of sale systems.
As usual, when travelling and staying at places – it’s important to check your card for fraudulent transactions during and after the event (and even before – I’ll tell you the story of the hoops I had to jump through to get my debit card unblocked when I arrived in the USA)…
But for now, keep an eye on those accounts… and if I was you – consider getting your credit cards re-issued on a different card number if you’ve been staying at a Mandarin Oriental…
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