Top Japanese hotel brand reveals cyberattack - Washington hotels hit by ransomware

• Washington Hotel hit by ransomware on Feb 13, confirmed unauthorized access to business data
• Customer info from “Washington Net” membership system stored externally, not yet confirmed as compromised
• PoS issues reported but no major disruptions; investigation ongoing, attackers unidentified, no data leaked ye

Japanese hotel chain The Washington Hotel was hit with ransomware earlier this month, and is currently investigating the attack.

In an announcement posted on the company’s website, the company said it spotted the intrusion late on February 13 , and that it moved swiftly to cut off the attackers’ access and prevent further damage. An internal task force was set up a day later, and both the police and external cybersecurity experts were notified.

“Unauthorized access to various business data stored on the server has been confirmed,” the announcement, machine-translated, reads. “The information leak is currently under investigation.”

Are Japanese brands under attack?

The hotel did stress that customer information of its member organization “Washington Net” is located on a server outside the company, so until now, there were no confirmations that customer data was nabbed.

Some hotels did report troubles with PoS terminals, the company said, but stressed there were “no major disruptions” to the business.

Washington Hotel operates under the Fujita Kanko brand. It is a widely recognized hotel chain brand operated by the Japanese hospitality company Fujita Kanko that also runs other hotel brands (such as Hotel Gracery). The Washington Hotel group has many properties across Japan and is positioned as a mid-range to budget hotel brand for both business and leisure travel.

It has more than 30 locations across Japan, 11,000 rooms, and almost five million guests every year.

While some data was most likely stolen, at press time, we don’t know what. No threat actors assumed responsibility for the attack, and no data leaked on the dark web.

Via BleepingComputer

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