Hilton Worldwide Holdings said on Saturday it was investigating claims that hackers had accessed registers in gift shops and eateries across the United States at a large number of Hilton Hotel and franchise properties.
Cyber-security blogger Brian Krebs said in a post on Friday that Visa Inc had sent warning of a violation to private alerts to financial organizations at a company between April 21 and July 27.
Sources at five different banks have determined that the cards in the alert had all been used at Hilton, Krebs said. The report said several unnamed sources told Krebs the episode may still be ongoing and might date back as far as November 2014.
“Unfortunately the chance of fraudulent credit card activity is so common for each company in today’s market,” a Hilton spokesman said in a statement. “We take any possible problem quite seriously, and we’re looking into this matter.”
Krebs, who broke the news of a gigantic 2013 violation at Target Corp a day before the firm announced it, said the cards had been used at the McLean, Virginia-based company’s main Hilton locations along with Embassy Suites, Doubletree, Hampton Inn and Suites, and the upscale Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts.