Credit Card Breach May Have Impacted 2 DC Hotels

WASHINGTON, DC — Two DC hotels could have been among thousands of properties impacted by a major credit card breach in 2010, parent company InterContinental Hotels Group announced.

IHG, the parent company of Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza and Candlewood Suites and other hotels, has released names of hotels potentially affected by the data breach that occurred between Sept. 29, 2016, and Dec. 29 2016.

The data breach at The Hamilton could have happened between Sept. 29, 2016 and Dec. 29, 2016, according to the company. The hotel is located downtown at 1001 14th St NW.

The Holiday Inn Express at 1917 Bladensburg Road NE. also could have been affected between Sept. 29, 2016 and Oct. 14, 2016, the company says.

According to the cyber security blogger Krebs on Security, the IHG's list of affected hotels include 1,175 locations out of 5,000 worldwide.

If you've been a customer at one of the group's hotels during that time period and believe your credit card information might have been stolen, IHG has posted an easily searchable list of compromised hotels and the timeframes during which the information was vulnerable. Customers can call the company with questions at 855-330-6367 from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday through Friday.

IHG hired a cybersecurity firm to investigate the incident. While malware was not removed from the hotels' systems until the investigation in February and March of 2017, the group have found no evidence that any data breaches occurred at Dec. 29. The group's hotels had begun moving to use Secure Payment Solutions, a program that encrypts customer credit card information, before the incident began.

"IHG has been working closely with the payment card networks as well as with the cyber security firm to confirm that the malware has been eradicated and evaluate ways for franchisees to enhance security measures," the company said in a statement.

Photo: NCinDC/Flickr