The recent target of the hackers has been the Earl Enterprise which the parent company of restaurants chains like Planet Hollywood, Buca di Beppo and Earl of Sandwich. Financial infrastructure has been the target of hackers for many years due to the monetary gain it provides.
What has happened with Earl Enterprise?
According to the Earl Enterprise, hackers were able to breach between 23 May 2018 and 18 March 2019.
The attack was 10 months long and hackers were able to make off with the details of 2 million debit and credit cards with their card numbers, expiry date and in some cases cardholder names.
The extent of the attack on Earl Enterprise and who is affected?
More than 2 million of Earl customers, as well as other restaurants like Chicken Guy in Florida, Mixology in LA and Tequila Taqueria in Las Vegas, were affected by this attack.
It should be noted that Earl Enterprises stated that Bertucci’s, Seaside on the Pier, Café Hollywood and Planet Hollywood hotels and resorts and all the online orders that were processed by third-party payment processor are not affected.
How the incident came to light?
Security blog Krebson security reports that they reported to the restaurant chain on 21 Feb 2019 after a stolen record containing 2 million credit and debit card numbers came to the dark web which belonged to restaurant chain Buca di Beppo.
After a month of the internal examination, Earl Enterprise acknowledged that hackers were able to steal credit and debit card information from their POS network.
The scary thing about this whole case is that the Earl was unable to notice that their system is compromised the news was broken by the third party.
What should be done?
First of all, keep your eye open for the news related to these types of cases.
For this particular hack has launched a web tool which will help in looking up the affected users, cities.
Earl Enterprise also launched a dedicated phone line which you can call for help between 9 AM t0 9 PM EST, from Monday to Friday.
