Marriott Says 500 million Starwood Guest Records Stolen in Massive Data Breach

An anonymous reader writes: Starwood Hotels has confirmed its hotel guest database of about 500 million customers has been stolen in a data breach. The hotel and resorts giant said in a statement filed with U.S. regulators that the 'unauthorized access' to its guest database was detected on or before September 10 -- but may have dated back as far as 2014. 'Marriott learned during the investigation that there had been unauthorized access to the Starwood network since 2014,' said the statement. 'Marriott recently discovered that an unauthorized party had copied and encrypted information, and took steps towards removing it.'

Specific details of the breach remain unknown. We've contacted Starwood for more and will update when we hear back. The company said hat it obtained and decrypted the database on November 19 and 'determined that the contents were from the Starwood guest reservation database.' Some 327 million records contained a guest's name, postal address, phone number, date of birth, gender, email address, passport number, Starwood's rewards information (including points and balance), arrival and departure information, reservation date, and their communication preferences.

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