Opinion ID: 2829975
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Three Cybersecurity Attacks

Text: As noted, on three occasions in 2008 and 2009 hackers accessed Wyndham’s network and the property management systems of Wyndham-branded hotels. In April 2008, hackers first broke into the local network of a hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, which was connected to Wyndham’s network and the Internet. They then used the brute-force method— repeatedly guessing users’ login IDs and passwords—to access an administrator account on Wyndham’s network. This enabled them to obtain consumer data on computers throughout the network. In total, the hackers obtained unencrypted information for over 500,000 accounts, which they sent to a domain in Russia. In March 2009, hackers attacked again, this time by accessing Wyndham’s network through an administrative account. The FTC claims that Wyndham was unaware of the attack for two months until consumers filed complaints about fraudulent charges. Wyndham then discovered “memoryscraping malware” used in the previous attack on more than thirty hotels’ computer systems. Id. at ¶ 34. The FTC asserts that, due to Wyndham’s “failure to monitor [the network] for 10 the malware used in the previous attack, hackers had unauthorized access to [its] network for approximately two months.” Id. In this second attack, the hackers obtained unencrypted payment card information for approximately 50,000 consumers from the property management systems of 39 hotels. Hackers in late 2009 breached Wyndham’s cybersecurity a third time by accessing an administrator account on one of its networks. Because Wyndham “had still not adequately limited access between . . . the Wyndhambranded hotels’ property management systems, [Wyndham’s network], and the Internet,” the hackers had access to the property management servers of multiple hotels. Id. at ¶ 37. Wyndham only learned of the intrusion in January 2010 when a credit card company received complaints from cardholders. In this third attack, hackers obtained payment card information for approximately 69,000 customers from the property management systems of 28 hotels. The FTC alleges that, in total, the hackers obtained payment card information from over 619,000 consumers, which (as noted) resulted in at least $10.6 million in fraud loss. It further states that consumers suffered financial injury through “unreimbursed fraudulent charges, increased costs, and lost access to funds or credit,” Id. at ¶ 40, and that they “expended time and money resolving fraudulent charges and mitigating subsequent harm.” Id.