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Chinese Spies Reportedly Behind Massive Marriott Hack (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: A Chinese intelligence-gathering effort was behind the massive Marriott hotels data breach that exposed the personal information for up to 500 million people, the New York Times reported Tuesday. The hackers are believed to have been working for China's Ministry of State Security, the Times reported citing sources who had been briefed on the investigation's preliminary results. The revelation emerges as the U.S. Justice Department is preparing to announce new indictments against Chinese hackers working for the intelligence and military services, the Times reported.
The hotel chain revealed last month that it had discovered that hackers had compromised the guest reservation database of its Starwood division, whose brands include Sheraton, W Hotels, Westin, Le Meridien, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft and St. Regis. Marriott said some of the stolen information also included payment card numbers and expiration dates. Private investigators involved in a probe into the breach had previously discovered hacking tools, techniques and procedures that were used in earlier cyberattacks that have been linked to Chinese hackers.
The hotel chain revealed last month that it had discovered that hackers had compromised the guest reservation database of its Starwood division, whose brands include Sheraton, W Hotels, Westin, Le Meridien, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft and St. Regis. Marriott said some of the stolen information also included payment card numbers and expiration dates. Private investigators involved in a probe into the breach had previously discovered hacking tools, techniques and procedures that were used in earlier cyberattacks that have been linked to Chinese hackers.
I expect professional spies to _not_ get caught or detected when doing such things. Breaking in is something amateurs can do today, but doing it without leaving evidence is something else.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
>> Chinese hack the shit out of the US again
But how can we blame the Russians?
China, Russia, 9-11 oh my.
Did they, like, leave a text file saying "We hacked you. Sincerely, China"? And of course everyone knows how useful booking information is to the evil Chinese government. God knows what evil things, monstrosities and machinations this will lead to.
After all, why spy at governments, branches of military, banks, political organisations, when you can go right for the real stuff and collect two years of past booking information from some hotel?
Clearly a work by the Chinese.
The CIA can fake the fingerprint origin of a hack to make it look like it came from a foreign agent hacker or country.
I feel like a state actor such as China would have the resources to simply get someone hired into a position at Marriott who could have access to the data.
This is what happens when you adequately reward your developers. America needs to start paying people just as adequately to fight this.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I expect professional spies to _not_ get caught or detected when doing such things. Breaking in is something amateurs can do today, but doing it without leaving evidence is something else.
Thay R SecRet Agert James Wong 07 was da spy whor broke in. He say, "I got to braheak in to the Americanr hortel chairn."
He's known as Wrong Way Wong in the intelligence commurnity. He thought Mariott was same as Trump hortels.
Not only do Chinese make shit stuff, they have shit spies.
They view things on a slant. They're arguments are full of chinks. And their women are constantly caught sideways.
If you cannot safeguard customersâ(TM) data, it should be a jailable offense to take, gather, request, or accept, or store customersâ(TM)s data. Itâ(TM)s become abundantly clear that NO ONE can safeguard customer data, therefore it should be regarded as contraband for all businesses. Any business that wants, for example, to issue loyalty cards, should only be allowed to do so provided there is NO connection with the individual with the account. Account username policy would be âoeyour account login is your loyalty card number; safeguard this, because we have no way to restore if you lose it, because we are LEGALLY PROHIBITED from keeping any data on you. Period.â
If I started a company, this is how it would behave. Why, you ask, loyalty cards? Thatâ(TM)s not really quite what they would be, but theyâ(TM)d be analogous to them, but not connectable to any person.
So if you hacked somehow into my company database, you wouldn't know whose data you had.
Also, for every real account in the database, thered be about a thousand fakes. Good luck figuring out anything useful from all the fake data. :-)
So... they leveraged an NSA hoarded hack right?
It is hard to sort out who in every case but in aggregate it's safe to say china, N. Korea, and Russia appear to abuse the internet. So affected countries should cut off all access from IPs in those countries on certain days of the week. Say Friday for Russia, thurdsay for china and wednesday for N. Korea. While some people in those countries will manage to use proxies to evade the block it's going to be a grand annoyance and reminder. It will tie bussiness productivity to state policies on both state sponsored hacking and winking acceptance of pirate hacking. If Aliexpress or Some Semiconductor company can't transact bussiness with a US or european market 1 day a week it's going to hurt.
And by one day a week it gives room to increase or decrease the weekly timeout.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
USA (and affiliate) spies must have already had the same information. In a way the Chinese (or whoever really was behind the hack) just equalized the situation.
Likely neither gathered it in a fully legal way (it's not exclusively USA laws that apply worldwide).
If you want to make a powerful argument that the USA shouldn't be running the internet, then you do this kind of stunt.
That forces apple apps to understand when a site does not support utf8, to then not use it. --->> (TM)
How can hackers not be omnipotent? They are hacking! And they have hacks!
All products produced in China now get 100% tariffs and arrest Chinese nationals suspected of spying and hacking. Remove most favored nation status and tell the Chinese government war will be declared.
it's the CIA
Maybe these were the same Chinese spies that planted the chips in Super Micro servers. Who would doubt a reputable source like Bloomberg?
It does seem like the Boogey Man from China has been inflated over the last two years. What could be causing that?
Africa was reportedly behind the attack, a pack of vicious nigg ers from Nigeria used all of their scam power at once to hack Marriott
It was NOT the Chinese. NOT the Russians. It WAS the nigg ers.
Why would you believe a government that scammed you a trillion dollars by falsifying claims of Iraq WMDs, that was shown to spying on China, their own "friends", and you, and that hijacked a hostage for negotiation just last week?
Camping under a bridge has its perks. Today is/was cleanup day in Everett WA! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
But I was told Russia is the source of all evil. Why not Russia?
What does Marriott have that a government would want to steal? They're a hotel chain, not a defence contractor or research company.