Nothing makes a good hotel stay turn sour than unexpected charges. While that annoying “cleaning fee” the hotel stacked on your bill because they insisted someone in the room was smoking even though you know for a fact no one did may be a pain to deal with (a hypothetical example that may or may not be from personal experience), what’s even worse is finding new and unexplained charges on your credit card after a data breach lets hackers steal your credit card information from the hotel.

Unfortunately, that’s what many guests who stayed at Rosen Hotels & Resorts are now dealing with, after the hotel chain failed to notice a cyber intrusion. It began receiving reports in February that guests were seeing unauthorized charges on their cards after staying there, and following an investigation from a cybersecurity firm, determined that there was indeed a data breach involved.

Credit Snatched

According to reports, the hacker installed malware in Rosen Hotels & Resorts’ payment card network. This malware stole credit card data as it was routed, sometimes taking just the card’s number alone, but other times also taking the cardholder’s name, the card’s expiration date, and even the internal verification code.

Timing is Everything

The good news is that they seem to have narrowed down the dates in which card data was stolen to between September 2014 and February 2016. The bad news is that’s still a very lengthy window in which customers could have had their cards stolen.

Even worse news is that the initial attack may have happened up to 17 months ago, so it’s very possible that even more information has been stolen. Early detection is as necessary now as it ever was, especially in hotels, which are enticing targets for hackers out to steal credit card data.

What Now?

If you’ve stayed at a hotel as part of the RH&R chain, keep a close eye on your bills in the next few months. The hotel chain is also offering a helpline for customers who have been affected, along with a free credit report from Experian, Equifax, or TransUnion.

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