InterContinental Hotels Group, a Britain-based hotel chain, has announced that its IT systems were fraudulently accessed by some outsiders, thus disrupting all booking channels and applications.
Unconfirmed sources state that the attack was related to ransomware and an investigation to detect the culprits behind the intrusion has been launched. Security experts have been hired to start the recovery of the data from encryption.
InterContinental Hotels is not in a mood to entertain the demands of the hackers as it has an active disaster recovery plan. So, the question of paying the cyber criminals’ money in crypto doesn’t arise at all.
Hotel staff haven’t stopped taking bookings and are continuing the service with pen and paper.
NOTE 1- A ransomware attack is a kind of malware attack where threat actors steal data from a victim database and then encrypt it until a ransom is paid.
NOTE 2- Law enforcement agencies like the FBI are discoursing ransomware victims from paying a ransom, as it not only encourages crime but also doesn’t guaranty a decryption key for the ransom. As per a report released by Sophos, in the year 2020 and 2021, the number of victims who have been cyber attacked double time has increased by 80%. Meaning, threat actors are striking the same victims twice, as they get a guaranteed pay and the network of such victims is easy to infiltrate.
