14 DAY TRIAL // Restaurant Depot and Jetro customers are being officially informed that the company recently fell victim to a hacking operation and all their customers’ credit cards information may have fallen into the hands of profit-driven cybercriminals.
During the period between September 21 and November 18, 2011, unauthorized individuals managed to obtain cardholder names, credit card numbers, expiration dates and CCVs of consumers who made purchases at one of the stores.
The breach was discovered on November 9 and the company immediately started taking action. First, they hired Trustwave to investigate the affected devices and set up mechanisms to prevent further such incidents from occurring.
“Trustwave and our Information Technology staff reviewed the safeguards we use to protect card information and made appropriate changes to improve the security measures we use to protect card information,” reads a letter to customers.
“We notified all the major cards brands and provided information about potentially compromised accounts. The card brands, in turn, notified card-issuing financial institutions who can take steps to protect cardholders though enhanced fraud monitoring or by reissuing cards.”
According to Finextra, Trustwave found that malicious software was carefully placed on credit card processing systems used in the stores owned by Restaurant Depot. All the data obtained by the malware was sent to a server located in Russia.
The estimated number of individuals that may be affected by the incident is as high as 1 million.
Individuals who have been shopping at the aforementioned locations are advised to constantly check their bank accounts for any illegal activities that might take place. Credit freezes and credit monitoring services offered by financial institutions are also recommended.
If we consider the large number of credit cards involved and if we compare this incident to the one that affected Save Mart, we can only conclude that the risk of someone falling victim to fraud is very high.