Marriott hotel hack: Half a billion customers’ personal information stolen in data breach

International hotel chain Marriott has been hacked in a security breach affecting an estimated half a billion guests, the company announced today.

The data breach affects customers who booked reservations at Starwood properties in the US, and the stolen information includes names, addresses, email addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and in some cases payment card numbers and expiration dates.

Card numbers were encrypted but Marriott has not been able to rule out that the decryption tools were not also taken.

“We deeply regret this incident happened,” said Arne Sorenson, Marriott president and chief executive.

“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.”