Posted on July 7, 2017 at 3:16 PM

Sabre Confirms the Hack of a Reservation System

Some two months ago, the travel giant called the Sabre Corporation has surprised everyone by admitting that they have hired a cyber security company. The company in question is called Mandiant, and their job was to investigate a possibility of a concealed hacking attack.

Two months later, and Sabre has another public announcement that will shock the world. The results of the investigation have arrived, and Mandiant has managed to confirm the hack. Apparently, there was an unauthorized breach, and Sabre was invaded by a third party. The company’ systems were accessed by someone who ended up with the Sabre’s customer payment data.

This is a pretty bad news for any company, but it is even worse for Sabre. The company processes reservations for almost 100,000 hotels, and also over 70 airlines around the world. The money that passes through this company is often around $120 billion.

On the positive side, Sabre has reported that only their Sabre Hospitality System was compromised. This is the system that is in charge of bookings for different hotels. This includes travel agents, as well as consumers.

Their spokesperson has stated that, during the attack, less that 15% of the daily bookings were compromised. This may not seem like much of a comfort, but the alternative is much scarier. Still, the size of the breach is pretty significant as it is, and information that got exposed include reservation details, as well as payment card data.

Customers’ reservation details mostly include names, phone numbers, email addresses, as well as home addresses.

This is just another example which demonstrates the rise in cyber attacks that is slowly advancing through the recent years. And Sabre is not the only one, with only last year, over 1,000 properties belonging to InterContinental Hotels Group have had malware in their systems. The malware was mostly aiming for customers’ credit and debit card data. Then there was HEI Hotels & Resorts report, which included incidents in several different locations.

After Mandiant’s investigation has been concluded, Sabre informed everyone affected by the breach and explained the situation. This included customers, but also card providers and partners. A call center was also set up in order to give information and answer questions that affected parties have. Also, its security has been enhanced, to prevent any such incident from happening again.