Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Hackers Steal Pin Numbers on Debit Cards Used at Barnes and Noble Stores

NYT reports:

Hackers have stolen credit card information for customers who shopped as recently as last month at 63 Barnes & Noble stores across the country, including stores in New York City, San Diego, Miami and Chicago, according to two people briefed on the investigation.


These people said the company discovered on Sept. 14 that the information had been stolen but kept the matter quiet at the Justice Department’s request so the F.B.I. could determine who was behind the attacks.

They said the information was stolen by hackers who broke into the keypads in front of registers where customers swipe their credit cards and enter their personal identification numbers, or PINs.

A high-ranking official for the company, confirming the security breach, said that hackers had used information from some customers’ credit cards to make unauthorized purchases but that activity had declined in recent weeks.

As the company tried to determine how the attack occurred, it turned off all 7,000 keypads in its several hundred stores and had them shipped to a site where the company could examine them. Barnes & Noble determined that only one keypad in each of the 63 stores had been hacked, according to these people. Nevertheless, the company has not reinstalled the other pads.

“Right now we have no PIN pads in any stores and we are O.K. with that,” said the company official.
The list of stores where hacks occurred is here.

1 comment:

  1. can't happen like this with bitcoin....just sayin:)

    ReplyDelete