Luxury hotel chain hit twice by hackers after reneging on ransomware payment | IT PRO

The group claims to have information belonging to millions of customers who stayed at Centara hotels and resorts between 2003 and 2021.



A hacking group believed to have been behind recent attacks against Acer has now reportedly breached a system belonging to a luxury hotel chain in Thailand.



The Desorden group claims to have stolen over 400GB of files and databases containing information belonging to millions of hotel guests, financial data, and corporate information from Centara Hotels & Resorts.



The theft is said to have affected guests who stayed at the hotel chain between 2003 and 2021, including any guests that made advanced bookings to December this year, according to the hackers.



The personal information stolen includes guest names, passport numbers, ID number, email, date of birth and check in and departure dates.



The group said that similar to the Central Restaurants Group, which it hacked earlier this month, the hotel chain is part of Central Group, owned by the Chirathivat family, who are worth $11.6 billion. It also said this latest attack was a retaliation following a decision by the Central Group management team to initially agree to pay the ransom for the first hack, only to then change their minds on payment day.



Operators connected to Desorden have said they were negotiating a ransom payment of $900,000 before Central Group backed out of the deal on Tuesday. It's unclear what the hackers are now demanding from the company following the latest attack.



The group told ZDNet that the attack had "basically brought down their entire backend, which consists of 5 servers".