Booking.com was reportedly hacked by a US intel agency but never told customers

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A hacker working for a US intelligence agency breached the servers of Booking.com in 2016 and stole user data related to the Middle East, according to a book published on Thursday. The book also says the online travel agency opted to keep the incident secret.

Amsterdam-based Booking.com made the decision after calling in the Dutch intelligence service, known as AIVD, to investigate the data breach. On the advice of legal counsel, the company didn’t notify affected customers or the Dutch Data Protection Authority. The grounds: Booking.com wasn’t legally required to do so because no sensitive or financial information was accessed.

IT specialists working for Booking.com told a different story, according to the book De Machine: In de ban van Booking.com (English translation: The Machine: Under the Spell of Booking.com). The book’s authors, three journalists at the Dutch national newspaper NRC, report that the internal name for the breach was the “PIN-leak,” because the breach involved stolen PINs from reservations.

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