A ransomware attack on a Scandinavian hotel chain has reportedly locked down guests in their hotel rooms respectively, and the hotel staff were forced to use hammers to break open doors for the guests to breathe fresh air.
Well, it seems over-exaggerated!
But yes, a situation in such form arose when most of the key cards stopped working at the hotel rooms of Nordic Choice, forcing guests to remain indoors for a couple of hours.
Conti Ransomware is suspected to be behind the incident that disrupted the computer systems handling check-ins, check-outs and creation of new digital room keys.
As the key cards were out of action, new guests were being accompanied by the hotel staff to their respective rooms as the existing digital check-in systems stopped working.
Law enforcement agencies in Norway are busy investigating the incident and the hotel staff are taking help with pen & paper make registration of new guests and keep them updated with the best hospitality services.
The hotel’s IT staff are planning to recover the systems through backup, as they are not interested in entertaining the demands put-forth by the Conti Ransomware spreading gang in any manner.
Note- Conti Ransomware gang steals information from the victimized database and then encrypt all the info that is been stored on the server until a ransom ranging between $10m to $50m is paid them in cryptocurrency. So, there is a high probability that information of guests such as names, email address, telephone number, DoB, and their payment mode info could have been accessed by hackers. So, those who visited the Nordic Choice Hotels in recent times, should keep a strict vigil on their bank statements in coming months and also should be super-cautious while clicking on links embedded in text messages and emails as they could be a targeted with campaigns related to identity thefts.
