Trump’s Hotel Chain Reveals Hack ‘May have Stolen Credit Card Data’

Presidential candidate and real-estate baron Donald Trump’s chain of high-end hotels “may have been the victim of a data security incident”, the company has informed customers. Trump Hotel Collection (THC) executives ascribed the breach to malware that was active on its systems “between May 19, 2014, and June 2, 2015”. Tim Erlin, Director of security and product management at Tripwire commented that “[W]e believe that the malware may have affected payment card data including payment card account number, card expiration date and security code,” the company said in a statement.

[su_note note_color=”#ffffcc” text_color=”#00000″]Tim Erlin, Director of Security and Product Management at Tripwire :

“The point-of-sale system is fast becoming a favorite point-of-compromise as malware author focus on where they can extract valuable credit card information. Even if you’re not storing credit card data, it has to come off the card and be sent to a processor.

We’re not talking about just big retailers who need to worry about point-of-sale malware. Any organization, from healthcare to hotels, that accepts payment cards is a target.

Just because the breach has been discovered, doesn’t mean these attackers don’t count this as a success. It’s likely that they’ve targeted and compromised other hotel chains as well.

Protecting point-of-sale systems requires more than basic anti-virus. Administrators need to monitor these devices for the slightest footprint in the virtual sand, and investigate suspicious changes on the system to determine if they’re malicious.

The rise of ram scraping malware is evidence that we’ve been making progress in security. Forcing attackers to innovate their techniques and author more complex tools raises the cost of attack. We should continue narrowing the point of sale attack surface as much as possible.

While cyberattacks from China may be a more politically charged topic, it’s likely that candidate Trump will get a few more cybersecurity questions after this announcement.”[/su_note][su_box title=”About Tripwire” style=”noise” box_color=”#336588″]Tripwire is a leading provider of advanced threat, security and compliance solutions that enable enterprises, service providers and government agencies to confidently detect, prevent and respond to cybersecurity threats. Tripwire solutions are based on high-fidelity asset visibility and deep endpoint intelligence combined with business-context and enable security automation through enterprise integration. Tripwire’s portfolio of enterprise-class security solutions includes configuration and policy management, file integrity monitoring, vulnerability management and log intelligence.[/su_box]