Comparison between WannaCry and the Petya cyber-attacks

Running head: INFORMATION SECURITY
Information Security
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Author’s Note-

1INFORMATION SECURITY
Part A
Ransomware attack on Hotel guests in Atrium Hospitality
Defining the Problem
The Atrium Hospitality having its headquarter in Alpharetta, Georgia is a famous hotel
and is an asset management company. The Atrium Hospitality has faced ramsomware attack in
March 16, 2018. Atrium Hospitality announced that they had faced a data breach with
information of 376 hotel guests in danger (Pollak, 2018). The information of the customers
impacted because of the data breach. The hotel and the hotel guests were unaware of the actual
misuse of data and took preventive measures to protect the data from further misuse. In the
month of December 2017, the Hospitality discovered that of the workstations at Holiday Inn was
affected by the ransomware attack. When Atrium Hospitality came to know about the attack
which took place, the Hospitality immediately decided to change the workstation from the
previous network and immediately started investigation with the forensic investigation firm. On
14th February, 2018, the Hospitality stated that three hundred and seventy six data including the
name, license number, passport number as well as debit and credit card details of the customers
was assessable to the hackers. As soon as Atrium got to know about the fact, 182 guests were
notified about the data breach through mails and address of others were not available. The
hospitality also revealed the case to state regulators as per requirement. Atrium was not aware of
the fact whether the data taken were misused and also cannot ensure whether the data was
actually accessed by the hackers or not (Kica, 2016). So, the Atrium Hospitality informed all its
guests to check their financial statements, monitors if credited is done and then reports any
suspicious activities if the customers records. After reporting, the Atrium Hospitality will take

2INFORMATION SECURITY
necessary steps that are required to prevent that particular transaction or prevent some other
unauthenticated transactions in future.
How it occurred and reason for occurring?
On 8th December, 2017, Atrium Hospitality discovered the fact that the workstation of
Sacramento Holiday Inn was infected by the malware. The officials of the Atrium Hospitality
expected a data breach in one of the workstation of Atrium Hospitality and detached its network
from other sources (Kharraz et al., 2015). The Atrium Hospitality was not aware of the data
breach that took place in one of their holiday inn. They were also not aware about if the hackers
took the information of the customers and misused them. The officials were not aware of what
had actually taken the. The data breach took place because the security system was not updated
that would protect the workstation from data breach ("Atrium Hospitality Notifies Hotel Guests
of Compromise", 2018). The data breach occurred by hacking the name, passport number, debit
and credit card details of the guests and license number of 376 guests. From all the guests
affected, 182 guests were informed by mailing them and other guests were not informed as their
address were not available with the officials. The systems that the Holiday Inn of Atrium
Hospitality were using were not updated and so that lead to data breach in the workstation. The
guests who were impacted because of data breach, were requested to keep a look on their
financial statements, monitor their credit reports and if they would detect any suspicious activity,
they were informed to report immediately to the officials of protective team ("16-31 March 2018
Cyber Attacks Timeline", 2018). The cyber-attack that took place contained malicious programs
which directly affected the programs ran in the workstation of Sacramento Holiday Inn. The
Atrium Hospitality were not having proper preventive measures to protect the details of their