Washington Hotel Group Learns That ‘Secure Enough’ Is Never Fucking Enough
Oh look, another day, another dipshit company that thought their security was “good enough” gets a colossal boot up their arse from ransomware. This time it’s WHG Co., Ltd., the geniuses behind Washington Hotels in Japan, who’ve just admitted they’ve been skullfucked by the BlackSuit ransomware gang. Color me fucking shocked.
According to their carefully crafted PR damage control—sorry, I mean “disclosure”—they found out about this clusterfuck on October 31st, one day after the attack on October 30th. Some twatwaffles exploited a vulnerability in their file-sharing servers, which then gave them access to their precious “Reftel” reservation system. Four out of 47 hotels got the digital equivalent of a Glasgow kiss. Management immediately sprang into action, which in corporate-speak means they ran around like headless chickens while IT actually did the work.
And what tasty morsels did these shitstains make off with? Oh, only about 202,594 records including names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, gender, birth dates, and reservation details. But don’t worry, folks! The company pinky-swears that no credit card or passport info was stolen. Because if there’s one thing I trust after a data breach, it’s the company’s initial assessment of what wasn’t taken. That’s always accurate. Fucking hell.
The operational “impact” lasted nine glorious days of sheer bedlam, during which the hotels went full 1980s and used manual procedures. Nothing says “premium hospitality experience” like watching a receptionist flip through paper ledgers while 47 people queue behind you. They refused to pay the ransom—oh how brave!—and are now “strengthening security measures,” which is corporate for “buying whatever snake oil the nearest vendor is selling and making the intern change all the passwords.”
The BlackSuit gang, predictably, has already started leaking the data because that’s what these cockwombles do. WHG is now offering “free credit monitoring” to affected customers, the digital equivalent of handing someone a bandage after you’ve run them over with a truck. But hey, at least they disclosed it within a month, which is practically lightning speed for a Japanese company. Usually, they wait until the statute of limitations expires and everyone’s died of old age.
Reminds me of the time some executive demanded we remove multi-factor authentication because it was “too inconvenient for the sales team.” I told him I’d remove it right after he signed a personal guarantee covering all potential losses from a breach. Strangely, he decided that typing six extra digits wasn’t such a hardship after all. Funny how the threat of personal bankruptcy focuses the mind.
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