A group of visitors to a luxury hotel in Austria found themselves locked out of their rooms following a targeted ransomware attack that disabled the resort’s central key management system.

The attack that targeted the Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt hotel, leaving guests unable to get into their rooms, also infiltrated the hotel’s reservation and cash desk systems. Those behind the attack demanded a ransom of  €1,500 ($1,605) to return control of the systems to hotel management, which was subsequently paid.

“The house was totally booked with 180 guests, we had no other choice,” Managing Director Christoph Brandstaetter told The Local Austria. “Neither police nor insurance help you in this case.”

Once the ransom was paid, those behind the attack unlocked the key registry system and other computers, but in doing so also left a backdoor in the system and tried to exploit it again in another attack. But the hotel had at that point closed down the backdoor by replacing computers and implementing new security measures. The hotel said that it went public with the news that they had been hacked because they “wanted to see more done to tackle cybercriminals as this sort of activity is set to get worse.”

This wasn’t the first time hotel had been targeted. “The restoration of our system after the first attack in summer has cost us several thousand Euros,” Brandstaetter explained. “We did not get any money from the insurance so far because none of those to blame could be found.”

Tyrone Erasmus from MWR InfoSecurity told The Register that the targeted attack was different to the usual forms of ransomware attacks. “This is an interesting case, as the technique used to hold the hotel to ransom was unconventional and entirely targeted,” he said. “Commonly, ransomware affects the availability of data held by businesses, but in this case the attackers understood that denying access to hotel rooms would be an effective way to extort money.”

The hotel does have a plan to prevent future attacks on its key management system: It will rip the entire system out and revert to using actual, old-fashioned physical keys.

Image: Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt