Do you like to eat at Dickey's BBQ? 3,000,000 credit cards compromised.

[thewayne]

Mainly in California and Arizona. Dickey's is a franchised operation, and as franchisees can choose their point of sale operation, it is most likely that a downstream credit card operator was compromised.

From the article, one of the consultants brought in said "The financial institutions we’ve been working with have already seen a significant amount of fraud related to these cards,” and "data indicated some 156 Dickey’s locations across 30 states likely had payment systems compromised by card-stealing malware, with the highest exposure in California and Arizona. Gemini puts the exposure window between July 2019 and August 2020.

Apparently with the emphasis in hardening systems against ransomware, people have been neglecting converting over to chip payment and the swiping of cards is notorious for being vulnerable to card theft.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/10/breach-at-dickeys-bbq-smokes-3m-cards/

Comments

[devilc]

Meep.

Of course the CC payment processing companies have not been helpful at all. Instead of just dispatching everybody a new terminal and telling them to plug it in, nope, you can buy a new terminal.

Which means that a lot of small businesses, which run on tight margins, are like, "nope, until it stops working or you no longer support it, I'm using it."

The only reason my husband switched to a chip system is he got a whole new CC processor (was offered better terms and switched).

[silveradept]

That's not good, but also as was mentioned above, it's not like the people who have to use these terminals are going to be able to upgrade themselves with the margins they have. If it's important enough for the card companies to wash their hands of any fraud that happens from stripes, they can afford to take whatever hit their profits will take to make it possible for everyone to get up to the standard. It's not like they're not making money hand-over-fist anyway.

[moxie_man]

Dickey's, like a lot of other chain franchises, attempted to come to Maine, but quickly failed. Other failures include (but not inclusive):
Krispy Kream
Red Lobster (obviously--how could they compete with all the mom and pop places here that feature lobster?)
Tim Horton's (in the southern half of the state, sadly)