A hack has the Restaurant wholesale chain Restaurant Depot in hot water, after thieves compromised the firm’s credit card processing systems and made off with customer information, including credit card numbers. One published report claims as many as 100,000 individuals may have been victims of the breach.
The company sent a notice warning customers about the theft dated November 25 (PDF) following an investigation by the firm TrustWave revealed the compromise. Restaurant Depot contacted Trustwave in early November after learning of a pattern of fraudulent purchases affecting their customers.
The notice advises customers who shopped at Restaurant Depot between September and November to contact their credit card companies and order replacement cards. It is unclear who is responsible for the attack. However, a report on the Web site Finextra.com claims that stolen data was forwarded to a computer in Russia, and that 100,000 customers were affected. However, the report does not cite a source for the information.
Thefts linked to retail outlets have become commonplace. In recent weeks, California-based Lucky Supermarkets warned customers that self service checkout lines in 20 of its stores were found to have been outfitted with credit card skimmers that stole customer information.
More recently, four Romanian men were indicted for hacking int Subway restaurants in the U.S. An estimated 80,000 customers of those Subway outlets believed to have been victims in the attack which compromised of point of sale terminals over a number of years.
