Some recent notable credit card breaches

[thewayne]

First off, the southern-located fast food chain, Shoney's was hit.  The thieves were able to load malware in to their point of sale systems.  The breach appears to have existed from December '16 to early March.  On April 16 the company Best American Hospitality issued a statement saying that they were the source of the breach, they manage a number of locations that are corporate-owned.  That article points to a press release that lists 37 locations in South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, Virginia, Missouri, Florida, and Arkansas that were hacked, but it doesn't discuss how many cards were compromised.  The list (PDF) shows the earliest date that they know the location was compromised.  Personally I'm curious HOW the location was compromised: physical overlay of the POS card reader, BIOS hack, remote network infiltration, what.  At least they're offering free credit monitoring, which is the absolute least that they can do.


This next one is a biggie.  Sabre Corp's hospitality unit was hacked.  They provide reservation services for 32 THOUSAND properties.  Currently no information has been released as to how long the breech existed or how many cards may have been compromised.  If you do a lot of corporate travel, your employer might want to know about this.

“The unauthorized access has been shut off and there is no evidence of continued unauthorized activity,” reads a brief statement that Sabre sent to affected properties today. “There is no reason to believe that any other Sabre systems beyond SynXis Central Reservations have been affected.”

Sabre’s software, data, mobile and distribution solutions are used by hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotel properties to manage critical operations, including passenger and guest reservations, revenue management, flight, network and crew management. Sabre also operates a leading global travel marketplace, which processes more than $110 billion of estimated travel spend annually by connecting travel buyers and suppliers.

Sabre told customers that it didn’t have any additional details about the breach to share at this time, so it remains unclear what the exact cause of the breach may be or for how long it may have persisted.

Comments

[stardreamer]

And how much of this could have been prevented if the US had gone to chipped cards 5 years ago like they were supposed to? I am SO relieved that all my cards are chipped now! Plus it's much faster. Stick your card into the slot, wait 5 seconds, pull it out. In many cases that's it, although sometimes you still have to provide a signature.

[moxie_man]

My debit and credit card are each chipped. However, its slower up here if the merchant has upgraded to a chip reader. A lot slower. I don't mind, except said chain supermarket/store merchants just let the lines get longer and longer at their establishments rather than open extra registers.

[thewayne]

My fav used book store in Phoenix, Bookmans, installed EMV terminals. But I swear they hooked up that system to dial-up lines! Seems like it takes 15 seconds or more for that chip to authorize. The clerks are clearly frustrated, as are the customers. They really got screwed by that vendor.

It was interesting when we were in Germany two years ago. All of the merchants were chipped, almost all of the restaurant wait staff had portable scanners/printers and would take care of your bill at the table. And they didn't have those never sufficiently accursed tablets that perpetually spewed ads at you that they do at Applebee's and Chili's. In my immediate area, I'd say chip implementation is no more than 25-50%, Phoenix is probably 75%+. The problem is the vendors found a wonderful way to make more money on the upgrade: first sell the merchants the chip and pin terminals, THEN tell them that the chip reader is an additional software upgrade. *KA-CHING!*

Things are improving since the Target hack of a few years ago, but there's still considerable room for continued improvement.

Down here, probably about four years ago Walmart added an "Express DIY Checkout" and seemed to stop opening their clerked express checkout lane. So lines got longer. I rarely shop there anymore since Albertsons opened but had to nip in a couple of weeks ago, and found they opened a second DIY checkout on the other side of the lanes. The whole purpose of those is to cut down on staffing and increase profits, who cares if it annoys shoppers.