Sabre investigating hack of user payments

Technology systems provider Sabre has revealed an unknown attacker infiltrated its widely-used reservations system and accessed sensitive user payment information.

Sabre is a multinational technology company that provides solutions to the travel and tourism industry. Its customer list in Australia includes Virgin Airlines, and globally Hertz, Etihad, and Singapore Airlines, among others.

In a quarterly filing with the US SEC, first spotted by Brian Krebs, Sabre revealed an "instance of unauthorised access to payment information" contained within a subset of hotel reservations processed through its SynXis Central Reservations platform.

It claims 32,000 hotels across the globe use the hosted inventory management platform.

The technology company said it had asked FireEye's forensics unit Mandiant - which helped clean up the infamous Sony hack - to help with the investigation, and law enforcement has been notified.

It provided no other details of the breach.

Sabre told customers it had "shut off" the unauthorised access and there was no evidence of continued activity.

"There is no reason to believe that any other Sabre systems beyond SynXis Central Reservations have been affected," it said in a statement.

"Our Sabre hospitality solutions customers are being notified of the investigation with a commitment to keep them informed. 

"Consistent with our steadfast commitment to providing world-class security for our solutions and support for our customers, we have dedicated internal staff and independent cyber experts to complete this investigation as quickly as possible."

The disclosure follows the revelation of a similar breach at the Intercontinental Hotel Group, which last month said at least 1200 of its properties - which include brands like Holiday Inn - had been affected by malware installed at PoS machines by attackers to steal card credentials.