DarkHotel: A Sophisticated New Hacking Attack Targets High-Profile Hotel Guests - WIRED

WIRED, By Kim Zetter

The hotel guest probably never knew what hit him. When he tried to get online using his five-star hotel’s WiFi network, he got a pop-up alerting him to a new Adobe software update. When he clicked to accept the download, he got a malicious executable instead.

What he didn’t know was that the sophisticated attackers who targeted him had been lurking on the hotel’s network for days waiting for him to check in. They uploaded their malware to the hotel’s server days before his arrival, then deleted it from the hotel network days after he left.

That’s the conclusion reached by researchers at Kaspersky Lab and the third-party company that manages the WiFi network of the unidentified hotel where the guest stayed, located somewhere in Asia. Kaspersky says the attackers have been active for at least seven years, conducting surgical strikes against targeted guests at other luxury hotels in Asia as well as infecting victims via spear-phishing attacks and P2P networks. Read more.