Zaxby’s Restaurant Chain System Infected by Malware

Georgia-based restaurant chain, Zaxby's Franchising Inc. operating among 500 restaurants in over 13 US states have recently had their computers connected with its point-of-sale (POS), as published by softpedia.com on January 16, 2013.

The suspicious files came to fore after the credit card processing companies identified the locations to be a common point-of-purchase for all fraud events.

According to the Company, during the forensic evaluation, Zaxby's Franchising, Inc. recognized some suspicious files, containing malware, on the licensees' computer systems at certain Zaxby's locations.

As those files could have been employed in exporting guest names and numbers from the plastic cards, Zaxby's indicated towards just law enforcement authorities regarding the criminal activity. In a bid to prevent such intrusions in future, the Company has adopted some further arrangement for security. Zaxby is also working along with the infected stores so that affected customers might be taken care of.

Forensic evaluation has not recognized that if credit or debit card date left the processing systems of any of the affected locations. However, the Company did say that it was concerned that an attacker may have accessed data, containing credit and debit card data.

This breach represents the type of high-tech crime that even brick and mortar retail establishments face as their processes become more computerized. Tom Cross, Director of security Research, Lancope comments in a statement, released by security week on January 15, 2013.

"A computer at a business utilize in processing large number of credit card transactions and can be considered as a gold mine for such an attacker, continued by Cross. "While the payment card industry has answered to this threat with conformity program supposed to assure that card processing system are protected, those compliance processes are not fool-proof and breaches are still possible."

Commenting on the same incident, Maumelle (Arkanas, US) Police chief, Sam Williams says that he was unaware of any suspected reports of credit card details received from the local restaurant but pleased customers to closely evaluate their financial accounts as it could take more time to show up, as per a statement published by pulaskinews.net on January 16, 2013.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/22/2013