
Luxury hotel chain Shangri-La Group has been a victim of a major data breach. Reportedly, the personal data of guests who had stayed at its hotels in countries such as Tokyo, Singapore, Thailand, Taipei, and Hong Kong has been compromised.
"A sophisticated threat actor managed to bypass Shangri-La's IT security monitoring systems undetected and illegally accessed the guest databases," the hotel chain's senior vice-president for operations and process transformation, Brian Yu informed the affected guests in an e-mail.
The database contained data such asguest names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, Shangri-La Circle membership numbers, reservation dates and company names.
"Although we were not able to confirm the content of the exfiltrated data files, it is likely that they contained guest data," he further said.
The hotel, however, assured the guests that critical information such as passport numbers, ID numbers, date of birth and credit card numbers were encrypted.
The hotel informed that the data breach incident transpired during the May-July period, earlier this year. Interestingly enough, the data breach occurred at the same time as Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's top security summit was held at the Shangri-La, Organe Grove Road hotel in Singapore after a two-year Covid-19-induced hiatus.
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Experts accessing the data breach suggested that the top security summit might have been the target of the hackers. However, when asked about the same, the Shangri-La hotel authorities refused to make any connection.
“There is no evidence to suggest any specific hotel or event was singled out. As a matter of policy, we do not disclose information about our guests," said a hotel spokesman.
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(With inputs from agencies)
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