Skimming Heist That Hit Convenience Chain May Have Compromised 30 Million Cards
upstart from IRC writes:
Skimming heist that hit convenience chain may have compromised 30 million cards:
The Wawa chain of convenience stores said in December that it had discovered card-skimming malware on point-of-sale machines at just about all of its 850 stores. The infection began rolling out to the store's payment-processing system on March 4 and wasn't discovered until December 10. It took two more days for the malware to be fully contained. The malware collected payment-card numbers, expiration dates, and cardholder names.
On Monday night, dark Web site Joker's Stash began uploading stolen data for what it claimed were 30 million payment cards, researchers from fraud intelligence service Gemini Advisory reported in a blog post. Joker's Stash is one of the biggest dark Web marketplaces for buying stolen payment-card data. The anonymous site has named the lasted haul "BIGBADABOOM-III." While the site didn't identify the Wawa hack as the source of the data, Gemini researchers said they were able to determine that was the case.
If the Joker's Stash claims are true, the Wawa hack would be among the biggest payment-card breaches in history, behind the 2014 breach of Home Depot, which lost personal data for 50 million customers, and the 2013 breach of Target stores, which lost 40 million sets of data. Because the Wawa infection affected point-of-sale machines for as many as 850 locations and wasn't detected for nine months, the malware had plenty of opportunity to collect massive amounts of sensitive data.
[...] Anyone who has used a payment card at a Wawa location from March to December of last year should check billing statements extra closely. Wawa is offering affected customers one year of credit monitoring, but the effectiveness of these services is questionable. A more effective measure is to place a security freeze on credit files. Freezes prevent creditors from accessing credit files at the three national credit reporting bureaus unless the consumer explicitly consents.
Previously:
PoS Malware Skimmed Convenience Stores' Customers' Card Data for 8 Months
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