USAToday.com has reported that P.F. Chang’s China Bistro is investigating a possible data breach involving credit and debit card data that may have been stolen from its restaurant locations nationwide.
The report in question comes from Brian Krebs’ website KrebsOnSecurity.com, the same cybersecurity blogger who uncovered data breaches at Target earlier this year.
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The USAToday.com post, “P.F. Chang’s Investigates Potential Data Breach,” reports that Krebs found that customer data from thousands of credit and debit cards turned up for sale at the same place that sold data from the tens of millions of cards compromised in the notorious Target breach.
Krebs reported that banking sources told him the cards had been used at P.F. Chang’s China Bistro locations from the beginning of March, 2014 to May 19, 2014.
Krebs’ own posts on KrebsOnSecurity.com suggest that the thieves likely obtained this type of card data by hacking into cash registers at retail locations and “planting malicious software that surreptitiously records mag stripe data when cards are swiped through the machines.”
Thieves can then re-encode the stripe data onto new counterfeit cards and use them to buy expensive goods that can be resold for cash, KrebsOnSecurity reported. “The breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus, Michaels and Sally Beauty all were powered by malware that thieves planted on point-of-sale systems.”
USAToday.com states that the restaurant chain has 211 P.F. Chang’s locations in the USA and 192 Pei Wei Asian Diner restaurants.
“P.F. Chang’s takes these matters very seriously and is currently investigating the situation, working with the authorities to learn more,” said Anne Deanovic, a spokeswoman for the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based restaurant chain. “We will provide an update as soon as we have additional information.”
Read the full USAToday.com post here.
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