Hoteliers and their customers are the target of cyberattacks targeting their interface with the Booking.com reservations platform, alerted this Friday, January 13, the employers’ union for the hotel and restaurant industry, the GNI, which invites victim professionals to disconnect from the site. , to warn their customers and to file a complaint.
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Since the end of December, cybercriminals have taken control of the interface of certain professionals with Booking.com, thanks to targeted phishing techniques and have sought to extort payment data from Internet users who have used the platform, alerts the GNI in an email. to its members.
These messages invite hoteliers to click on a link which contains a file infecting their PC with viruses which steal passwords enabling hackers to modify the “brand name, contact details, rooms and rates” The establishments.
“The tip of the iceberg”
The hackers also pose as the hotel to its customers, making contact either via Booking.com messaging or via WhatsApp, to invite them to click on a link and provide their bank details.
“We don’t know where the security breach came from, from the hoteliers or from Booking, but the cybercriminal manages to enter the hotelier’s messaging system and recover the information”explained to AFP Véronique Martin, director of the Europe and digital department at the GNI.
“Hoteliers must file a complaint and so must customers, which will make it possible to assess the extent of these attacks”she said, specifying that she had “identified a dozen targeted Parisian hoteliers” by these. “But that is certainly only the tip of the iceberg. We must prevent it from spreading throughout France, or even in Europe”says Véronique Martin.
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The Parisian hotelier Fabienne Ardouin, who manages the France Albion and Helussi hotels, has identified “23 cases of phishing customers, five of whom clicked on the link and gave their credit card information to the hackers”she told AFP. “I immediately cut off my connectivity with the site: I no longer have rooms for sale on Booking.com, I have been losing turnover for a week”says the hotel owner who chairs the GNI’s Digital Commission.
Alerted, the platform remained silent, she continues: “My account manager just told me they were still looking”.
“Extremely common” hacks
The GNI seized the platform cybermalveillance.gouv.fr and alerted Fraud Prevention and the Cnil on “the lack of support from Booking.com in this security breach”.
For Gérôme Billois, cybersecurity expert at Wavestone, “hacks of this kind on platforms are extremely common”with a “increased quality” of these: “Hackers manage to obtain usernames and passwords using very well-made scenarios”.
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He calls on platforms to “put in place procedures to react very quickly” in the event of a cyberattack. Asked by AFP, the platform claims that “The security flaw does not come from Booking.com” and ensure that “the accounts concerned were quickly locked”and “The travelers potentially concerned had been informed. »
