Andy Hoffman reports:
Officials at the Pzazz entertainment complex in Burlington have confirmed “computer hackers” breached security at their facility last year, resulting in dozens of credit card numbers being stolen.
Rob Higgins, general manager of the complex, recently sent letters to several American Express cardholders who were victimized last year by high-tech thieves who used the stolen card numbers to make illegal purchases throughout the United States.
“We are writing to inform you that your American Express credit card information (including your name, credit card number and expiration date), may have been compromised by computer hackers who infiltrated the computer security system that processed food service payments … at Great River Entertainment facilities,” he said in the letter.
Read more on The HawkEye.
With a bit of digging, I found that Great Rivers Entertainment posted a notice on their web site on August 31:
Great River Entertainment, LLC (“GRE”), the entertainment company which includes the Catfish Bend Inn and Spa, Catfish Bend Casino, Fun City and Pzazz Resort Hotel and Event Center, has confirmed that between August and November 2011, a payment application system at one of GRE facilities became infected by malware of unknown origin, resulting in a potential compromise of credit card information of individuals who patronized these establishments during this time and utilized credit or debit cards to pay for goods and services. GRE has been working with independent security and forensics investigators to determine the extent of the breach and to identify those individuals that may have potentially been affected as a result.
[…]
So when did they first discover the breach and how did they first learn of it?
GRE did not offer affected customers any free credit monitoring services, despite the fact that their information may have been breached and was at risk of misuse for what may have already been up to a year and despite the fact that there has already been misuse of at least some of the card numbers.
This is why the point of Sale systems need to be segregated from regular use. Why not have POS systems locked down – They should access rules to contact the processing company (pos machine talks only to processing site – no others), which means that a regular user CANNOT use ANY point of sale system to check email, surf or anything else. It becomes a simple point-A-to-point-B machine, and thats IT.
Establish “rings of trust”, when it comes to workstations. if you have at least 3 categories of rings you should be able to eliminate 90%+ of network badness.