Big-name "businessmen" have become the key to a new type of cyber-attacks.
In Turkey, hackers have come up with a new way to gain access to the data of hotel and airline guests. They pretend to be assistants to influential big-name businessmen who want to book rooms or tickets for their patrons.
Hackers send emails to hotels asking them to confirm that they can meet the special requirements of their rich clients. For example, one of these emails reads: "I am the personal assistant of Konstantin Muller, a well-known German businessman. He instructed me to choose a hotel for him to stay in. I chose your hotel, but it is very fastidious and unusual. If you are able to meet Mr. Muller's requests, he is willing to handsomely reward the management and staff of your hotel. Can I send you his wish list? Please take a look at them and let me know if you can complete them and how much it will cost."
If the hotel agrees to receive a list of requirements, hackers send it a second email with an attached file in RAR format, which supposedly contains the businessman's wishes. However, it is this file that contains the program that steals all data from the hotel's databases.
Yakup Dinler, Chairman of the Management Board of Kayakapı Premium Caves Hotel, posted examples of such emails on Twitter* and warned industry colleagues to be careful with such messages.
In Turkey, hackers have come up with a new way to gain access to the data of hotel and airline guests. They pretend to be assistants to influential big-name businessmen who want to book rooms or tickets for their patrons.
Hackers send emails to hotels asking them to confirm that they can meet the special requirements of their rich clients. For example, one of these emails reads: "I am the personal assistant of Konstantin Muller, a well-known German businessman. He instructed me to choose a hotel for him to stay in. I chose your hotel, but it is very fastidious and unusual. If you are able to meet Mr. Muller's requests, he is willing to handsomely reward the management and staff of your hotel. Can I send you his wish list? Please take a look at them and let me know if you can complete them and how much it will cost."
If the hotel agrees to receive a list of requirements, hackers send it a second email with an attached file in RAR format, which supposedly contains the businessman's wishes. However, it is this file that contains the program that steals all data from the hotel's databases.
Yakup Dinler, Chairman of the Management Board of Kayakapı Premium Caves Hotel, posted examples of such emails on Twitter* and warned industry colleagues to be careful with such messages.
