Choice Hotels has launched an investigation and will evaluate its vendor relationships after the personal data of its staff , including names , phone numbers and email addresses , was stolen by hackers . Hotel franchisor Choice Hotels has confirmed a breach in which attackers stole 700,000 guest records from a publicly available MongoDB database without a password or any authentication. The information was exposed for four days on an unsecured MongoDB server . Initially discovered on 30 June by BinaryEdge , it was only when security researcher Bob Diachenko sent a second notification to Choice Hotels that the database was recovered on 2 July . Diachenko said the hackers had left an automated ransom of BTC0.4 ( $ 1 ) .
Choice Hotels has launched an investigation and will evaluate its vendor relationships after the personal data of its staff , including names , phone numbers and email addresses , was stolen by hackers . The information was exposed for four days on an unsecured MongoDB server . Initially discovered on 30 June by BinaryEdge , it was only when security researcher Bob Diachenko sent a second notification to Choice Hotels that the database was recovered on 2 July . Diachenko said the hackers had left an automated ransom of BTC0.4 ( $ 1 ) .