While downsizing the estimate of how many guests were impacted by the historic breach of its hotel reservation system, Marriott International on Friday announced that roughly 5.25 million unencrypted passport numbers are now among the sensitive data illegally obtained by hackers unknown.
While downsizing the estimate of how many guests were impacted by the historic breach of its hotel reservation system, Marriott International on Friday announced that roughly 5.25 million unencrypted passport numbers are now among the sensitive data illegally obtained by hackers unknown.
Saying its initial count of 500 million victims was too high, the company offered a new estimate of fewer than 383 million people; a figure based on the number of guest records found in its database. Because the system, it said, occasionally generates multiple records for a single guest, what the company really disclosed on Friday is that, as of right now, it basically has no idea how many people have actually been affected.
Regardless, the breach of Marriott’s Starwood hotel unit seems poised to earn the title of the largest known breach of personal data, dwarfing Equifax’s 2017 security incident by more than a hundred million souls.
