Ransomware shuts guests out of hotel rooms

The growing scourge of ransomware led to disruptions at one of Europe's top hotels and to the close circuit camera network of Washington DC police eight days before Trump's inauguration.

Hotel managers at the Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt in Austria publicly disclosed they had been forced to pay a €1500 ($2120) ransom after cybercriminals managed to take down the hotel's entire key system.

Because of the incident, guests could no longer get into their hotel rooms, The Local reported. With the hotel fully booked, the managers felt they had no choice but to pay the ransom.

The criminals subsequently unlocked the key system, but left a backdoor for a future attack. The hoteliers believe they have now been attacked three times by the same attackers, but they have now replaced their systems and integrated the latest security standards, leaving the hackers locked out.

But now the hotel plans to implement old-fashioned door locks with real keys as an additional precaution.

Separately, Washington DC police revealed that ransomware infected 123 of 187 network video recorders, representing 70% of storage devices that record data from police surveillance cameras in public areas, The Washington Post reported.

While the infection did hinder some recording capabilities, the incident lasted only around 48 hours and no significant disruption was felt, according to the report. No ransom was paid, with the infection removed by a system restart at each site.

Image courtesy of Victor Camilo under CC

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