Hungarian Hacker Blackmails Marriott for Job

A cybercriminal that resides in Hungary pleaded guilty after he was arrested for hacking into the computer systems of Marriott International, blackmailing the company with the purpose of getting a job.

26-year old Attila Nemeth tried to obtain a job as a computer engineer at Marriott in a highly unorthodox way, reports DataBreaches.

After hacking into the computer networks of the corporation, he started sending emails to them on November 10, 2010, threatening to publish the information he obtained as a result of the hack if we wasn't offered a job.

Since he didn't get any replies, on November 13 he sent another message, but this time with an attachment that contained proof of the breach.

Seeing that the whole thing was not a scam, a U.S. Secret Service agent pretended to be an employee of Marriott in the attempt of making Nemeth reveal as much information as he could.

While the suspect believed he was speaking with company personnel, he was actually communicating with the agent, providing a copy of his passport and even offering to move to the United States to get the much-desired job.

On January 17, 2011, believing he was expected for a job interview, Nemeth travelled to the US and had a chat with the agent that was still pretending to be a Marriott employee. During the interview, he explained in detail how he managed to commit the cybercrime.

It turns out that he started by sending a malware containing email to one of the company's employees, which later gave him access to the networks from where he stole the information. By using a server located in Hungary, he managed to get away with documents that included financial information and other confidential and proprietary data.

For transmitting malicious code and for blackmailing the organization, the suspect could be sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison. This might have seemed like a joke to him, but Marriott reports that the entire incident cost them somewhere between $400,000 (280,000 EUR) and $1 million (700,000 EUR).