Exposed database left terabyte of travelers' data open to the public

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Exposed database left terabyte of travelers' data open to the public - cnet

Exclusive: The database has information on hundreds of thousands of travelers, including credit card numbers, names and addresses.


When it comes to travel, most people are concerned with planning their trip, getting the best price and making sure they've packed everything. Now they also need to worry about whether their reservation companies have properly secured their data: Security researchers found that one of Europe's largest hotel booking companies left more than a terabyte of sensitive data exposed on a public server.

The exposed database contained travelers' information like names, home addresses, lodging, children's personal information, credit card numbers and thousands of passwords stored in plaintext, the security researchers said Wednesday. The database stores information on 140,000 clients, each of which could be an individual, a group of travelers or an organization.

The database belongs to Gekko Group, a subsidiary of France-based AccorHotels, Europe's largest hospitality company. Gekko Group handles business travel and luxury travel with more than 600,000 hotels across the world, according to its website. AccorHotels referred to Gekko Group for comment.
 
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