Marriott announces security breach could affect up to 500 million guests

On November 30, Marriott announced that it is investigating a data security incident involving the Starwood guest reservation database.

The company has determined that there was unauthorised access to the database as of November 19, 2018. The database contains guest information relating to reservations at Starwood properties* on or before September 10, 2018. Starwood brands include: W Hotels, St Regis, Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, Westin Hotels & Resorts, Element Hotels, Aloft Hotels, The Luxury Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts, as well as Four Points by Sheraton and Design Hotels. Starwood branded timeshare properties are also included.

On September 8, 2018, Marriott received an alert from an internal security tool regarding an attempt to access the Starwood guest reservation database in the US. Marriott engaged security experts to help determine what occurred, and learned that there had been unauthorised access to the Starwood network since 2014. 

"The company recently discovered that an unauthorised party had copied and encrypted information, and took steps towards removing it. On November 19, 2018, Marriott was able to decrypt the information and determined that the contents were from the Starwood guest reservation database," Marriott said in a statement.

The company estimates that the encrypted information affects a maximum of 500 million guests who made a reservation at a Starwood property. "For approximately 327 million of these guests, the information includes some combination of name, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number, Starwood Preferred Guest account information, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure information, reservation date, and communication preferences. 

"For some, the information also includes payment card numbers and payment card expiration dates, but the payment card numbers were encrypted using Advanced Encryption Standard encryption (AES-128). There are two components needed to decrypt the payment card numbers, and at this point, Marriott has not been able to rule out the possibility that both were taken. For the remaining guests, the information was limited to name and sometimes other data such as mailing address, email address, or other information," the company said.

“We deeply regret this incident happened,” said Arne Sorenson, Marriott’s President and CEO. “We fell short of what our guests deserve and what we expect of ourselves. We are doing everything we can to support our guests, and using lessons learned to be better moving forward.

“Today, Marriott is reaffirming our commitment to our guests around the world. We are working hard to ensure our guests have answers to questions about their personal information, with a dedicated website and call centre. We will also continue to support the efforts of law enforcement and to work with leading security experts to improve. Finally, we are devoting the resources necessary to phase out Starwood systems and accelerate the ongoing security enhancements to our network.”

Marriott reported this incident to law enforcement and continues to support their investigation. The company has already begun notifying regulatory authorities. Marriott has also taken the following steps to help guests monitor and protect their information:

Dedicated website and call centre
A dedicated website and call centre has been set up to answer questions about the incident. A set of frequently-asked questions on the site may be supplemented over time.

The call centre is open seven days a week and is available in multiple languages. There are numbers on the website available for Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the UAE. Call volume may be high, Marriott said.

Email notification
Marriott has been sending emails since November 30, 2018, to affected guests whose email addresses are in the Starwood guest reservation database.

Free WebWatcher enrollment
Marriott is providing guests the opportunity to enroll in WebWatcher free of charge for one year, but only in the US, UK and Canada. WebWatcher monitors Internet sites where personal information is shared and generates an alert to the consumer if evidence of the consumer’s personal information is found. Due to regulatory and other reasons, WebWatcher or similar products are not available in all countries, Marriott explained.

"Don't Google WebWatcher," said John Shier, Senior Security Advisor, Sophos, warning that hackers will already be capitalising on the incident. "If you Google 'WebWatcher' you won't find the monitoring service, you'll find lots of links to spyware of the same name. Don't sign up for that. Do follow the links to country-specific versions of the official breach site. You cannot sign up for monitoring from the main breach page, you have to go to the all-but-identical versions of the page for the US, UK or Canada."

"The potential fallout from the Marriott’s Starwood data breach should be alarming to anyone who has stayed at a Starwood property in the last four years. Not only are guests at risk for opportunistic phishing attacks, but targeted phishing emails are almost certain, as well as phone scams and potential financial fraud. 

"Unlike previous breaches, this attack also included passport numbers for some individuals who are now at increased risk for identity theft. At this point, however, it's unclear what level of exposure each individual victim has been subject to. Until then, all potential victims should assume the worst and take all necessary precautions to protect themselves from all manner of scams," he added.

Victims should be on alert for spearphishing, Shier noted. "This creates the perfect scenario for cybercriminals to actually spearphish consumers because they have this type of detailed information," he said.

And while Marriott has said it will email Starwood Preferred Guests who may be impacted, he said that recipients should not click on links in emails or other communication that seem to have come from Marriott or Starwood hotels. "It’s possible that criminals will try to take advantage of this by sending malicious tweets or phishing emails that look like they’ve come from the company. Hover over URLs and links to see the address before you click. Look at the email address to see where it is from," he advised.

Credit cards should be monitored for suspicious activity as well. "As a safety precaution, change the password to your online credit card account. If you use the same password for similar financial management websites, immediately change the password on those websites. As a best security practice, always choose a different, strong password for each sensitive account," he said.

He also suggested changing passwords to Starwood Preferred Guest accounts.

Sophos protects servers from ransomware

Sophos, a network and endpoint security provider, has announced that its anti-ransomware CryptoGuard technology is now available with Sophos Server Protection products. With this optimisation, Sophos Server Protection now has signatureless detection capabilities to combat ransomware on servers - similar to Sophos Intercept X for endpoints.

Sophos launched Sophos Intercept X with CryptoGuard in September 2016. It stops the spontaneous encryption of data by ransomware within seconds of detection.

By adding CryptoGuard to server security, Sophos is closing a critical gap by preventing ransomware attacks that could come in through rogue, guest or remote access users or other weaknesses in a company’s network. For example, if a company allows bring-your-own laptops on the network, remote access for employees or is victimised by an insider cyber threat, servers become highly susceptible to ransomware. Additionally, network shares on servers are high-value targets as they contain proprietary financials, personally identifiable information and other key data, and should be protected as such.

“Servers are considered the jackpot for cybercriminals, since they can store confidential corporate and employee information, medical records with social security numbers or private customer documents. It would be devastating for organisations to lose this kind of sensitive data to ransomware,” said Dan Schiappa, Senior VP and GM of Sophos’ Enduser and Network Security Groups.

“Most organisations back up their data, but recovery from a backup is not always easy. Businesses, schools or hospitals do not want the liability, hassle and operational disruption required to restore from a backup. Anti-ransomware technology is a critical layer for the protection and ongoing accessibility of the information that resides on servers."

Interested?

Pricing for the complete range of Sophos Server Protection products is available from authorised Sophos Partners worldwide.

posted from Bloggeroid

Sophos Clean eliminates malware intelligently

Sophos, a global player in network and endpoint security, has launched Sophos Clean, the latest addition to its enduser protection portfolio of malware detection, remediation and removal software. The signature-less technology uses progressive behaviour analytics, forensics and collective intelligence to discover and remove code from zero-day threats, Trojans, rootkits, polymorphic malware, irritating cookies, spyware and adware.

Built on technology acquired from SurfRight in December 2015, Sophos Clean represents the next generation of malware detection and removal tools that can detect known and unknown threats. The on-demand scan does not need to be installed, which is particularly useful in cases of ransomware infection or in situations where malware is manipulating installed security software.

“The need for next-generation endpoint protection that doesn’t rely on signatures is long established. Zero-day threats and some ransomware like Cryptolocker can only be detected by the integrated capabilities of exploit prevention, behaviour analytics and pre-execution heuristics built into our endpoint protection software today,” commented Dan Schiappa, GM and SVP for Enduser Security at Sophos. “Sophos Clean can complement any installed anti-malware software by providing a second opinion on suspected files. With a minimal footprint and fast scan, Sophos Clean will quickly identify and remove all residual traces of malware.”

Resilient malware attacks critical system files or boot records to manipulate Windows and antivirus software - even before the operating system boots. Sophos Clean can remove persistent threats from within the operating system and replaces infected Windows resources with safe original versions. Reinfection attempts are proactively blocked until threat remediation has finished.

“Today’s malware is persistent by design: difficult to detect, difficult to remove and difficult to recover from,” commented Simon Reed, VP of SophosLabs. “Our researchers are seeing an ever increasing sophistication of malware, both the techniques being used and the heavy use of automation.

"Polymorphism is becoming the norm, and previously unknown malware is on the rise. These attacks, once active on your system, embed themselves deeply using multiple techniques to ensure long-term persistence. Using the latest removal technology, Sophos Clean is able to remove all fragments of a malware infection and return the system to a pristine state.”

Sophos Clean is an on-demand malware scanner of just 11 MB and can be started directly from a USB flash drive, CD/DVD or network attached storage device. The tool can scan and remediate without leaving a footprint on the local system. A typical scan with Sophos Clean takes less than five minutes because it can immediately distinguish safe applications from malicious software through advanced behaviour analysis and verification of content with a database of trusted applications. This also dramatically reduces the instances of false-positives, which some other signature-less malware detection tools have struggled to achieve.

Key features:

· Next-generation, signature-less, anti-malware detection and remediation

· Zero-day, unknown and ransomware threats detection

· Runs from anywhere with no installation required

· Intelligent behaviour-based analytics, supported by SophosLabs

· Minimal footprint fast scan

· Removes all traces of malware, rootkits, RATs, polymorphic attacks

· De-cloaks malware that is manipulating kernel, memory and other system elements

Interested?

Register for the 30-day free trial of Sophos Clean

Sophos Clean is designed for companies of all sizes and has a minimum purchase of five licences with bundle options available with Sophos Endpoint Protection. Pricing is available on the Sophos website

posted from Bloggeroid

Sophos just made securing corporate information on mobile devices easier

Source: Sophos website.

Sophos has introduced Sophos Mobile Control 5 (SMC 5), a tool that separates personal and corporate information and ensures that the corporate information is secure.

Typically, each device (laptop, tablet, iPad or smartphone) has to be configured, updated and managed individually. With SMC 5, IT managers only have to set the rules for each user once to manage the security of corporate content stored on the device or in a personal cloud. 

Dan Schiappa, SVP and GM of Sophos’ Enduser Security Group, said: “With more workers choosing to use their personal devices for business, IT managers have been faced with the complexity of managing corporate security, and adhering personal data privacy laws. Managing upwards of four devices per user brings considerable risk into the business, and unnecessarily diverts precious IT resource. By focusing on the user permissions, and with remote management and self-service capability, SMC 5 sets a new standard for usability and simplicity.” 

“IT administrators need to secure and manage all the various devices employees use today to get work done - smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops, but most management tools still treat these devices separately,” says Chris Hazelton, Research Director, Enterprise Mobility at 451 Research. 

“For small to medium-sized businesses, the ability reduce the number of management consoles can significantly streamline the onboarding process for IT departments that don’t have specialised staff. With the goal of enabling bring your own device (BYOD) with simplicity and secure productivity, enterprise mobile management (EMM) solutions must enable all forms of mobile computing. This means managing and securing devices, content, and applications with a user-centric approach that delivers the simplest experience for both users and administrators.”