Hackers use Ransomware to lock hotel rooms filled with guests

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Hotel Guests residing at Romantik Seehotel Jagwir Luxury Hotel were locked up in their rooms for almost 10 hours due to a cyber attack on the central key management system. According to a European News Resource, ā€˜ The Localā€™ the establishment reservation system and the cash desk system were also pulled down by the hackers.

The Local reported that the hackers demanded a ransom of $12 Bitcoins to unlock the door in which the hotel guests were residing. And demanded a $65 bitcoins ransom to unlock the hotel’s cash and reservation system.

As soon as the money was transferred to the specified bitcoins wallet the systems became fully functional.

But hotel sources claim that the systems were brought back to life due to a disaster recovery plan meant for the purpose of business continuity and not by the hackers.

Romantik Seehotel Jagewir has taken this incident on a very serious note and so has decided to decommission all their old IT Infrastructure to prevent any such attacks in future.

The hotel has also decided to implement the traditional lock and key management in place as it was in place 111 years ago.

All these days, hackers were known to take down systems of public and private entities till a ransom was paid to them.

But now, the latest hack proves that IT Infrastructure managed by computing devices is extremely vulnerable to hackers.

Note- Romantik Seehotel Jagewir is one of the most prestigious International Hotels located in Austria. The business is said to be in place since the 19th century and has patrons ranging from Internationally recognized film stars, Hollywood Celebrities and political stalwarts.

The hotel has requested the media not to blow up this news out of proportion as it could affect its client base.

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Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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