Data Hack Involving 24 Zoos in America Confirmed

For the 24 zoos across USA, there's been a computer hack affecting visitors with debit or credit cards during the past months, since according to an intermediate party Service Systems Associates (SSA) the handler of retail and concession facilities at the zoos in Florida to Hawaii lately confirmed the hack against it. Threatpost.com published this, July 10, 2015.

The Denver-based SSA's computers were found infected with malware. The company is known for supplying cultural attractions, in particular, museums and zoos via payment processing devices of debit/credit cards.

SSA reports that the PC-hackers gained unauthorized access to the point-of-sale (POS) devices of gift shops in the zoos for almost 3-months between March and June.

The firm stated that the infringement happened within the POS devices installed at many of its clients' gift shops. That implied that in case any guest utilized his payment card at those gift shops situated in its associate outlets during March 23-June 25, 2015, there could be a compromise of his card's information. Threatpost.com published this.

Apparently, the hackers managed intercepting the names, CVV security numbers, expiration dates along with the numbers of the debit/credit cards from their owners.

Timothy L. Brantley, CEO of SSA apologizing for the incident said that it was a very serious issue for SSA. No soon did the company knew of the attack, it started coordinating with the authorities of law enforcement as well as an intermediate forensic investigator for probing into the incident, he added. Yourhoustonnews.com reported this, July 10, 2015.

And while inquiry into the assault is on, security researchers located and eliminated the malware responsible for the hack.

According to Brantley, SSA wouldn't determine which gift shops alternatively zoos had been hacked; however, spotted nearly twelve affected websites. Denverpost.com reported this, July 9, 2015.

Chief Operating Officer of the zoo Gerry VanAcker stated it was naturally very worrying that there had been a compromise of their vendor's PC. All transactions occurring post 26th June remained unaffected from the hack as also that no further problem was expected in using payment cards at the retail outlets of SSA, he assured. Detroitnews.com reported this, July 8, 2015.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/23/2015