Marriott hack hits 500 million guests

The records of 500 million customers of the hotel group Marriott International have been involved in a data breach.

The hotel chain said the guest reservation database of its Starwood division had been compromised by an unauthorised party.

It said an internal investigation found that an attacker had been able to get access to the Starwood network since 2014. The company said it would notify customers whose records were in the database.

Marriott International bought Starwood in 2016, creating the largest hotel chain in the world with more than 5,800 properties. Starwood’s hotel brands include W Hotels, Sheraton, Le Méridien and Four Points by Sheraton. Marriott-branded hotels use a separate reservation system on a different network.

Marriott said it was alerted by an internal security tool that somebody was attempting to get access to the Starwood database. After investigating, it discovered that an “unauthorised party had copied and encrypted information”.

It said it believed its database contained records of up to 500 million customers.