Best Western Loses Details On 8 Million Customers

Albanach writes "Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper has an exclusive report that the Best Western hotel chain has lost the personal details of each and every guest who has stayed at any of its 1300 hotels in the past 12 months. This amounts to details on 8 million customers and includes information such as name, address, credit card details and employment details. The data even includes future booking details, causing speculation that homes could be targeted for burglary when it's anticipated they will be unoccupied. A Best Western spokesperson is quoted as saying 'Best Western took immediate action to disable the compromised log-in account in question. We are currently in the process of working with our credit card partners to ensure that all relevant procedural standards are met, and that the interests of our guests are protected.'"

Comments

What is a continental hotel?

[Renegade Lisp]

The Sunday Herald article is amazingly unclear about the scope of this breach. Which hotels are affected? The article says all "continental hotels". Does that, from a British Newspaper, mean european continental hotels only?

I stayed at Best Western in the US late last year. Luckily, I have since then changed to a different credit card than the one I used at the time.

The last time when a company I did business with lost my credit card details, I decided I wouldn't do anything about it until I really saw an unauthorized withdrawal from my account. Because in the past, when there was an unauthorized withdrawal (only happened to me once), a single phone call to the credit card company had been enough to get my money back (some 300 Euro). They said they would start to investigate it, but because it could take a long time, "here's your money back as a first measure."

With the recently stolen card info, I got a notice from my bank a few months later that they had to disable my card because there was an attempt to commit fraud with it. I got a new card with no further action required on my part.

Either way, this could turn out to be a big hassle for Best Western. If only they could let me know if my personal data was affected.

Re:What is a continental hotel?

[jrothwell97]

From a British newspaper, yes, 'continental' means 'European', as in a 'continental breakfast'.

Re:What is a continental hotel?

[jalet]

> Either way, this could turn out to be a big hassle for Best Western. If only they could let me know
> if my personal data was affected.

They will : they've just decided to put the list of names, addresses, and credit card information of the compromised client records freely available online for you to check. For convenience, they've put these datas available for download as an Excel spreadsheet as well.

Re:What is a continental hotel?

[Carewolf]

Well for brits, Continental means European except British.

Re:What is a continental hotel?

[Renegade Lisp]

Replying to myself, I just checked Wikipedia. Best Western has 4,000 hotels world-wide, 2,000 of which in North America. This means that the 1,312 hotels affected are probably all in continental Europe.

Re:What is a continental hotel?

[yoghurt]

No, jrothwell97 is right. The British do not consider themselves to be European. My British SO's family get indignant when you say they are Europeans. Thus, for the British, Continental is European.

The Swedes, on the other hand, do consider themselves European, but not continental (despite the Scandinavian peninsula being attached through Finland to Russia).

Re:What is a continental hotel?

[sticky_charris]

We British do consider ourselves to be European. A minority of xenophobes in Britain consider themselves not to be European (or realise they are and would prefer not to be) and an even smaller number don't even consider themselves (or want to be) part of Britain - they are Scottish, Irish, Welsh or English in their eyes. I consider myself Scottish, British and European, and almost everyone I have met with an intelligence regard themselves in the same way.

Greatest cyber-heist in world history

[telchine]

From TFA:

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.

This sounds a bit exaggerated to me. Greatest Cyber-Heist? WHat's the odds they just hadn't bothered to encrypted the details or had done something silly with the encryption keys?

Re:Greatest cyber-heist in world history

[Swampash]

By definition, the "Greatest" cyber-heist is one that we don't know about, since its greatness inheres in the fact that it's undetectable.

Not such a bad thing...

[pppppppman]

I didn't see what the problem was, until it got the part of "compromised accounts", etc. I thought they just lost it, like a hard disk died or they shredded them accidentally. Took me until half the page until I realized they "lost" it to someone else

Bad Summary

[telchine]

The summary is misleading:

The details wern't "Lost", the server was comprimised and they were stolen.

This doesn't affect all Best Western hotels, just some European ones.

The details stolen are from 2007-2008 (up to 20 months)

Re:Bad Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Personally, I'd like it if more companies *actually lost* my personal information more often. As in, "oops, that personal information was irretrievably deleted."

Re:Bad Summary

[mpe]

Personally, I'd like it if more companies *actually lost* my personal information more often. As in, "oops, that personal information was irretrievably deleted."

Or even as in they don't store personal information beyond the point when it is actually needed.
All sorts of companies appear to treat infrequent, even "once only" customers as though they are frequent repeat customers. It simply dosn't make much sense for a hotel chain to do this. With the possible exception of big corporate customers, the typical customer simply does not use their facilities that often. There is simply no good reason to store credit card details after any transactions (including those related to theft from/damage to rooms) are completed.

Re:Bad Summary

[ralphdaugherty]

This whole thing is very confusing to make sense of, starting with British writers that write like the National Enquirer.

Starting at the beginning, from TFA, someone from India "planted a trojan virus on one of the [continental] Best Western Hotel machines used for reservations" collecting the username and login of a staff person's login.

So what does that give them? A log in to the Best Western reservations system. Gee, wonder how many people know that top secret info? Like every freakin Best Western counter clerk, for starters.

And then what does one do when logged in to a reservations system? They make reservations!!! Holy cow, that's top secret too.

So here's where it gets confusing. How does someone knowing the login to a reservations system, which is like everyone using it, allow anyone who's logged in to acquire the entire reservations history table?

If anyone can do it by selecting history on all or something, then any Best Western clerk could have retrieved all this info at any time just by logging in.

With the trojan virus hocus pocus talk, there is an implied possibility that the virus spread to the server which provided a back door to retrieve the info, but that isn't stated. What's stated is the that the trojan merely recorded a login and the Indian got it. We know that is what is happening in bot networks all over the world. It's just a matter of which logins get snapped up from an unsuspecting user.

So either any Best Western clerk could retrieve all reservation history including credt card info at any time, in which case the Indian might just as well worked for one, or there's an unspecified and unexplained access to the server that provided a backdoor FTP from the server.

One or the other, but if the first then it wouldn't be the greatest cyber-crime ever, it would be the worst reservation system server software in history.

If the second, again, a clerk could have copied a trojan virus file from a floppy to the reservations PC and logged in, doesn't require a "hacker" at all.

My guess from the frenzied journalism is that a reservations clerk login is all it took rather than hoping the trojan virus could both capture the login and then also migrate successfully to the server, which trojans generally aren't multi-OS aware and assuming the server was the same OS, migrated with standard trojan attack vectors for the OS. I find that hard to believe though.

I also wonder whether there were any confirmed sightings of the info being offered in criminal forums by any of these quoted security experts or just how it came to be known that the entire reservations history table has been downloaded by anyone who acquired the reservations system login from the Indian.

Gee, having a Best Western reservations system login being the cyber-crime of the century is the goofiest thing I've seen since the last /. debacle thread, and we don't have to go too far back to find one.

  rd

Re:Bad Summary

[rampant poodle]

Lots of good points here. I have work with the same type of reservations system. A front desk clerks credentials could indeed be used to extract the data -- calling up one record at a time. (On versions released in the past five years all but the last 4 numbers of the CCN are masked so they still would not have everything they might want.)

A front desk clerk with way too many permissions, working knowledge of Oracle, and a DB password might be more efficient at stealing information.

Have not been able to find much information on this case yet. Have a feeling that the user level account info was merely the point of entry. There are also some very real Oracle issues and vulnerabilities with the system in question. Yes I am intentionally obfuscating at this point.

As an aside: The online reservation system stores no data. It sits in a DMZ, serves web pages, and uses PL_SQL, (or similar), to talk to a database server. If properly setup and configured it provides good protection to the internal DB server.

PARDON?

[jrothwell97]

'Best Western took immediate action to disable the compromised log-in account in question...

WHAT? In that case, they haven't lost the data due to carelessness (which I can just about forgive)- they've failed to secure their systems, which is criminally negligent.

Re:PARDON?

[DarkOx]

they've failed to secure their systems

Best Western took immediate action to disable the compromised log-in account in question...

Don't rush to judgements without the facts being in. Its entirelly possible from what was posted there that a single employee did something bad, not that the whole organization was negligent. In most computer systems you utimately have to have someone or a small group of people that are "root". Some account has to have the authority to do just about anything to the system in case it needs to be fixed, in a hurry.

Maybe a priniciple DBA decided to join the mob in this case who knows?

Even if you have separation of powers you are still vulnerable. Suppose the DBA and the System Admin are different people. Maybe the DBA keeps things locked up tight and the database itself is encrypted. The system admin can still just sit and read memory all day and collect the info that way. I used to do this in school. Some of us had shell accounts in the comp sci dept. I never had to "break" or get elevated privilages past any security but I could collect lots of interesting information by running a little C program I wrote which allocated a big character array, did not initialize it and then wrote the contents to disk every few moments, lather rinse repeat.

Re:PARDON?

[EdIII]

Criminally negligent is a very serious allegation you are making . I can not understate that.

I highly doubt that the Best Western meets the standards for criminal negligence in this case. In fact, the article mentions that they deactivated the compromised security credentials of the employee in question immediately. That alone suggests that levels of security were present in their information systems. You would seem to suggest that the fact they did means the security did not exist, which is contradictory. The security existed, it was just bypassed or failed in some way. Failure does not automatically equal negligence.

Remember, that criminal negligence is prosecuted by an attorney representing the state or the "people" which can result in jail time. There are several levels of criminal negligence. ALL of them involve the intent of the person(s) accused. In order to be criminally negligent a person would have to have knowledge that their actions (or lack of actions) would contribute to the harm of another. Furthermore, the reasonable person standards are also used. This reasonable person is appropriately informed, capable, aware of the law, and fair-minded. A reasonable person would have to conclude that the Best Western knew their security policies were inadequate and that there was a high probability that the sensitive information of their customers would be compromised in some way.

I highly doubt that a reasonable person, which would most likely be a network administrator or somebody possessing the requisite skill sets, would conclude that the security measures were that inadequate and that the Best Western had knowledge of that fact. Logon credentials by itself suggest that.

You should also know that to even consider criminal negligence, a crime must take place as a result of the negligence. Any culpability, or liability is related to those crimes only. The theft of the data is not a crime that could be considered either. It has to be a crime resulting from that criminal act. If I took my handgun and deliberately left it in the street and somebody picked it up and shot another person, that would be the situation I am referring too. So until it is proven that a suitably large number of customers were financially damaged to a large degree, criminal negligence would never even be discussed by any prosecutors in the first place. Considering the protections afforded to most credit card customers, the vast majority of all damage is going to be against the credit card companies anyways, so it would be up to them. It is far more likely that a civil suit will result from this, and only if the credit card companies believe they can construct a case that will convince a jury that negligence exists.

Now if the Best Western made a habit out of keeping all the information in plain text files on shared network drives, on computers directly attached to the Internet, with no firewalls with full access permissions for anonymous people, then you would absolutely have a point.

The reality of the situation suggests that they may have been negligent (doubtful), but to suggest jail time for those involved is a bit drastic, premature, and certainly not supported by the information we possess from this summary, let alone the whole article.

Re:PARDON?

[DarkOx]

Fine, but if the company did its due dilligence, like say priviliged IT works were promoted from with in after long periods of honest work, or new people were given careful background checks, then its sort of unfair to blame the company

Its clear whoever did this was found and disabled quickly so they do keep logs and somebody must be auditing those logs.

That is all that can reasonably be dones about your top level IT admin staff. Beyond that you create policy that says hey you have to ask someone from executive management before you do this and that, which is all well and good but in the end those people still have access and can simply not follow the policy if they are doing something with mal intent.

If it turns out to be something like that I really doubt the organization will be criminally liable. Someone my extract civil damages but I don't any criminal penalty would stick to the organization at as a whole.

Re:PARDON?

[Wildclaw]

Considering the protections afforded to most credit card customers, the vast majority of all damage is going to be against the credit card companies anyways, so it would be up to them. It is far more likely that a civil suit will result from this, and only if the credit card companies believe they can construct a case that will convince a jury that negligence exists.

The credit card companies trying to build a case of negilence???

The whole idea of using number that you have to show to untrusted individuals to make a payment and which can be reused any number of times is negilent in itself.

The sooner we get rid of credit card numbers the better.

Re:PARDON?

[rapiddescent]

Criminally negligent is a very serious allegation you are making . I can not understate that.

it's easy. Europe, and member states have strict data protection laws, Best Western have broken more than one. Certainly, in the UK directors of a company are responsible for data protection and could be criminally responsible - although this has not been tested in court.

Also, I think Best Western will certainly be having uncomfortable discussions with their merchant acquirers because Best Western have not met the terms in the acquirer contract to appli PCI DSS (Credit card security standards)

Certainly, I've worked in a few large organisations that have had to encrypt credit card data in databases so that members of staff may not see the data. if Best Western had done this, then the data would have been a bit more secure.

Re:PARDON?

[AK Marc]

Don't rush to judgements without the facts being in. Its entirelly possible from what was posted there that a single employee did something bad, not that the whole organization was negligent.

If you can break one account and download millions of records before anyone notices and you allow all that anonymously over the Internet, then I'd say there are some systemic problems. That is by far the easiest way to do it, but also the least secure. If any single user account gets hacked, the entire database is open for quick and easy download. But, if you had people go through a front-end that only fed one record at a time, logged all records presented to which accounts, froze the account at more than 10 records per minute or 100 in a day (or whatever number works) then you could make a system that would still allow for a user that gives away his username and password and not make millions of records available for immeditate download. And even if it did happen, you'd have an exact record of every record touched, to limit exposure and damages (no one claiming they were affected when they weren't).

Compartmentalization is important for security, but never done because it is often inconvenient for the users. The trick is to fine for just the loss of records, something like $10 per record exposed, so that they will treat them like real money, not just a PR issue if things go wrong. The current method of them paying only with proof of damages to a person, or buying a credity watch for a year (probably at some obscenely discounted rate and gets you on the credit report company's mailing list) is a joke. Make it cost real money and you'll see more lying about when they do happen and more security to prevent them from happening.

Even if you have separation of powers you are still vulnerable. Suppose the DBA and the System Admin are different people. Maybe the DBA keeps things locked up tight and the database itself is encrypted. The system admin can still just sit and read memory all day and collect the info that way. I used to do this in school. Some of us had shell accounts in the comp sci dept. I never had to "break" or get elevated privilages past any security but I could collect lots of interesting information by running a little C program I wrote which allocated a big character array, did not initialize it and then wrote the contents to disk every few moments, lather rinse repeat.

Or, they give full read access to everyone so that some accountant somewhere has an easier time setting up Crystal Reports to run a monthly report. You don't need high level access to compromise the data. Even the lowest read-only access will expose every record in it.

Re:PARDON?

[mpe]

Fine, but if the company did its due dilligence, like say priviliged IT works were promoted from with in after long periods of honest work, or new people were given careful background checks, then its sort of unfair to blame the company.

None of these address the real issue of storing data for considerably longer than it was necessary. Including data which should only have been in the system for a matter of seconds and never written to any non volatile storage.

This incident brought to you by Microsoft

[toby]

bypassing the system's security software and placing a Trojan virus on one of the Best Western Hotel machines used for reservations

We all know that's a very difficult attack when Windows is involved! Amazing cleverness here.

Just a nitpick

[CaptainZapp]

Even though Best Western can be seen as a "chain" it's actually a marketing umbrella for thousands of independent hotels.

From here :

Unlike other chains, which are often a mix of company-owned and franchised units, each Best Western hotel is an independently owned and operated franchise. Best Western does not offer franchises in the traditional sense (where both franchisee and franchisor are operating for-profit), however. Rather, Best Western operates as a nonprofit membership association, with each franchisee acting and voting as a member of the association.

How much has to happen 'til we see consequences?

[Opportunist]

We're getting "anti-terror" laws that cut away our civil liberties piece by piece, despite little to no terrorist activity anywhere. Yet we have "data loss" on an almost weekly base and nothing happens. Could anyone tell me why those companies are still in business? When did criminal neglect become less than a misdemeanor? Because, well, did you see anything happening out of it? I didn't.

These companies cause problems to their customers by their careless handling of personal and financial data. At the very least, they subject their customers to the threat that their credit card data is in the hands of a criminal, ready to use it whenever they please. When are we going to see some laws that mean consequences if you can't handle your customers' data?

Every company is very keen to collect everything about you, from your favorite dish to your shoe size, but they can't be bothered with the task to keep this information secure? If you can't keep info secure, don't collect it, dammit!

The problem here is more than data "loss".

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The issue is not so much that the data were stolen, though obviously that is bad; but that the hotel made it worse by keeping data on hand that weren't necessary. "Employment details"? WTF? I recognize that certain data are unavoidable in such a system; but I would like to see substantially greater penalties for those who compromise customer data that they don't even have a good reason for keeping.

Incidentally, when did we start using the term "lose" as a polite synonym for "fuck up in fine style"?

Re: risk from using Microsoft's Produc~1

[rs232]

"What of the risk to Microsoft's own customers from continuing to use Microsoft's demonstratively more insecure products?"

Yea, what imdemnification does the software provider give to the end user in such an eventuality. I mean, after all, they do imdemnify you against getting sued (by who), as long as you use a 'covered' product ..

There's only one thing to it..

[cheros]

.. get new credit cards every half year or so. You're not charged for the change, it secures any leakage you may have left behind and it ensures that data theft isn't a problem. If you think 6 months is too long (you could be travelling a lot), do it more often. And it means costs for the credit card company so maybe they start to come up with a better approach (or pass teh costs to the failing merchants, also a good incentive IMHO).

Personally, I'm waiting until one of the token manufacturers gets a deal with VISA and Mastercard. After all, a credit card is but a reference number to the contract you have with a credit card provider, and a token can do that just as well. But it could change the static challenge-response PIN with something smarter, and some tokens I've seen are even capable of working securely over a standard web browser.

Let me translate that last one for you: no more "secure" terminals needed (which is where some hacks now happen), using a token could be as simple as integrating an iframe right into the POS display. Also means safer shopping at home, btw.

And the technology exists already - it's just a matter of reaching the point where fraud is more costly than fixing the problem. Not needing secure terminals could mean that point is reached a lot earlier that originally thought. We're talking months here IMHO, followed by a few years while the terminals are phased out.

Not a troll,

[NZheretic]

Not a troll!

- The article states thats the passwords were leaked via a Microsoft desktop OS compromised by a password sniffing Trojan spread via a virus.
- Microsoft's OS and applications are disproportional at a far greater risk of being compromised than any other platform. That is a fact!
- Class action lawsuits are a valid method for the public to change the behavior of both large business and governmental agencies. For example, the EFF have been involved with many Class action lawsuits, to change the behavior of both business and governmental agencies.

Microsoft has been hinting that organizations deploying Linux are at risk from Microsoft's so called patents, however those same Microsoft customers face a much greater risk and loss from compromised Microsoft desktop systems.

And You Sir, are just another gutless Nym-shifing Microsoft Astroturd who is not even worth rating.

Re:Not a troll,

[tinkertim]

Microsoft's OS and applications also have the highest percentage of market share, hence if anyone seeking to compromise operating systems, it would be far more lucrative for them to do so with MS operating systems. Do you really believe that if Linux or OS X had 90% market share, they wouldn't be compromised?

That all depends on how well trained the employees of companies who use or administrate computers happen to be.

No matter the OS, someone opened a bad e-mail. Any employee working from home could have done that.

In this case, its probably more productive to put the application storing the information under a microscope rather than the underlying OS, at least to a degree.

Re:Not a troll,

[jimicus]

There's nothing intrinsic to Linux which would prevent an application running as an unprivileged task in userland hooking into the desktop environment and passing keystrokes to an unknown outside attacker.

I grant you, this hasn't happened yet. But there's little could prevent it.

You could significantly reduce the risk, however, by reducing how much access each user has to various systems, firewalling between departments and blocking not just incoming traffic but also outgoing traffic at the border, only allowing known-good traffic to pass.

This exact same technique works equally well regardless of what OS you use on the desktop ;)

Why

[geogob]

Most of the time, when I read a story along these lines (lost data, stolen data, client personal details incl. credit info), I have to ask myself "do they really need to archive all this data on their customers?"

I always wondered...

[hyades1]

...why the spokesdrones for so many major companies are allowed to spew the most outrageous bullshit ("We care about our staff"; "The privacy of our guests is our number one concern", etc.), and nobody in the mainstream press ever calls them on it.

Even politicians, for whom lying is as easy and natural as breathing, are rarely so brazenly, in-your-face dishonest.

Why give your home address ?

[Alain Williams]

causing speculation that homes could be targeted for burglary when it's anticipated they will be unoccupied.

I always give the hotel a business address - like that some criminal does not know where to go while I am at the hotel. I do the same with labels attached to luggage when flying. I have done this for years.

When will people learn to give the minimum of personal information that is absolutely necessary ?

Fact, Fact and more Facts

[NZheretic]

From the article:

... the Sunday Herald understands that a hacker from India - new to the world of cyber-crime - succeeded in bypassing the system's security software and placing a Trojan virus on one of the Best Western Hotel machines used for reservations. The next time a member of staff logged in, her username and password were collected and stored.

"Large corporate companies rely on anti-virus products to protect their infrastructure, but the problem with this approach is that these products only detect around 60% of threats out there. In the right hands, viruses can easily bypass these programs, as was the case here," explained Erasmus.

Those Large corporate companies rely on anti-virus products to protect Microsoft OS desktops. There is no equivalent Linux plague of viruses in the wild to be concerned about. Even the threat to MacOSX based desktops systems is minute in comparison to the Millions of Microsoft-targeting virus out in the wild.

Microsoft's most widely deployed platform and applications have not been secured. The XP platform has still has 30 unpatched vulnerabilities, the latest version of Internet Explorer still has 10 unpatched vulnerabilities, and Outlook 2003 ( the most widely deployed business version of Outlook ) still has one vulnerability outstanding from . Microsoft Office 2003, still the most widely deployed version of Office, has four outstanding vulnerabilities which put the desktop at high risk of being infected. These are all unpatched widely known vulnerabilities, and are only the ones in Microsoft's own product, not to mention all the third party vulnerabilities, in downloadable codecs for example, that the design of Microsoft's platforms makes it so easy for crackers to exploit.

In comparison, all of the major Linux based distros have an excellent record of closing known vulnerabilities within days if not hours, before the holes get a chance to be exploited. Also SELinux is becoming more widely deployed to secure applications against such threats.

Fact: Using a Microsoft based desktop put you a far high risk of being hack than either a Linux or Mac based desktop.

Re: Lost Vs. Stolen Round 2, Fight!

[TaoPhoenix]

Best Western wasn't deprived of their backups, were they? So by famous Slashdot Meme-Think, the info "wasn't stolen", it was "infringed"!

Since people don't make money by selling their personal details anymore, you can always go to their houses for live performances!

Since the "making available" theory is in trouble these days, we look for actual proof of data download... which we have, right? Then can we get the FBI to go after these guys for statutory damages of 3*$1*8M = $24 Million? (Because many songs have shorter lyrics than what a hotel collects)

Grand Theft Prosection FTW!

Best Western Responds

[geeky grrly]

Best Western responds: http://tinyurl.com/5863g8 Partial reprint, PR gobbledy gook removed: Posted 6:37 p.m. EDT Aug. 24, 2008 "The story printed in the Sunday, August 24, 2008, Glasgow Sunday Herald claiming a security breach of Best Western guest information is grossly unsubstantiated. Claims reported about our Central Reservations customer records are not accurate. [snip] The Sunday Herald reporter brought to our attention the possible compromise of a select portion of data at a single hotel [snip] We have found no evidence to support the sensational claims ultimately made by the reporter and newspaper. Most importantly, whereas the reporter asserted the recent compromise of data for past guests from as far back as 2007, Best Western purges all online reservations promptly upon guest departure. [snip] ...and again, we delete credit card information and all other personal information upon guest departure. SOURCE: Best Western International"