February 8, 2010
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News: Hospitality Industry Tops Hackers' List
If you book hotel, car, or flight arrangements online, you should know that the hospitality industry has become the fastest growing target of hackers stealing credit card information. A recent study conducted by Trustwave's SpiderLabs, an information security company, revealed that 38 percent of hacker attacks were against hotels. The study looked at 218 major credit card and personal data breach investigations involving 24 countries. Furthermore, it took the hotel establishments on the average 156 days before they realized there may have been a data theft. ..
According to the report, 98 percent of the stolen data was debit and credit card information. The breakdown by industry of recorded hacker attacks is:
• Hospitality industry: 38 percent • Financial service companies: 19 percent • Retail stores: 14.2 percent • Food and beverage: 13 percent • Business services: 5 percent • Technology industry: 4 percent • Other: 4 percent • Education field: 1.4 percent • Manufacturing: 1.4 percent
The report showed that over half of the credit card hacker attacks were done through a remote access application like “pc anywhere.” Remote access apps allow another individual to take control o the computer at a distance. They found that 90 percent of these used weak or default passwords. Approximately 42 percent of the attacks involved third party connections to steal the credit card information and just one percent involved email based malware.
Nicholas Percoco, Senior Vice President of Trustwave's, said that thieves are using the old fashion method to gain access because they think nobody's watching. Percoco also noted that these criminals choose credit card theft because it is an easy access to quick cash. SpiderLabs is an advanced security team within Trustwave focused on forensics, ethical hacking, and application security testing for our premier clients. Their report did not list any particular hotel that had a higher presence of data breaches.