Meliá Hotels International, one of the world’s largest hotel chains, has announced that its operations have been suspended following a cyber security incident.
This incident occurred on Monday, October 4, 2021, and primarily affected the Meliá company in Spain. The attackers took down parts of the internal network and some web-based servers, including the reservation system and the public website.
Several Spanish news outlets are reporting the incident as a ransomware attack, although the name of the hotel is not listed as a possible victim on the ransomware “leak site”, since some ransomware groups do not operate such sites. This is not a sign of a ransomware attack, according to the report.
Meliá, the world’s 17th-largest hotel chain by number of rooms and 25th-largest by number of facilities, disclosed the incident to Spanish financial institutions and law enforcement agencies, and the hotel chain is working with Telefonica’s cybersecurity department to address the attack.
The company recovered the system from the backup and within a few days the system was back up and running and the hotel was able to serve guests as usual.
A spokesperson for Meliá declined to comment further, and Spanish law enforcement officials would not comment on the ongoing investigation
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