Best Western admits computer system hacked

The Best Western hotel group has provided details of a breach of the computer system at one of its properties, but insists that the report stating that records involving eight million of its customers have been affected is false.

Responding to an article that was published in the Sunday Herald, the hotel chain refuted the claim that its customer records had been compromised on a massive scale.

On Tuesday, Best Western confirmed that there had been a breach of the computer system at one of its hotels in Germany, but denied the claims in the Sunday Herald article that all customers of Best Western’s European hotels since last year had details of their bookings compromised.

“We can confirm that on 21 August, 2008, three separate attempts were made via a single logon ID to access the same data from a single hotel,” the hotel chain noted in a prepared statement. “The hotel in question is the 107-room Best Western Hotel am Schloss Kopenick in Berlin, Germany, where a Trojan horse virus was detected by the hotel’s antivirus software.”

Best Western officials asserted that the login ID permitted access to only the bookings for the Berlin hotel. They went on to say that the login ID was terminated immediately after the breach was detected, and that the computer used during the breach was no longer in use.

The Sunday Herald’s estimate was that eight million Best Western customers had been affected by the breach, but the hotel group maintains that it was only 10 of its customers whose information had been impacted by the hack.

www.bestwestern.com