Landry’s, which owns more than 600 restaurants across the country, including Central Florida, announced the discovery of malware that could have accessed customers’ credit card data.
Officials from the corporation, which owns chains with area locations like Rainforest Cafe, Morton’s Steakhouse, Landry’s Steakhouse, Joe’s Crab Shack, Del Frisco’s and Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., announced this week that the data breach could have happened between March 13 and Oct. 17, 2019.
Affected credit cards were mistakenly swiped on order-entry systems, meant for putting in food orders and validating rewards or gift cards, instead of the payment terminals designed for payment.
Some of the malware was also found on the point-of-sale terminals but encryption technology in place scrambled the credit card.
A statement from Landry’s said the malware searched for track data which can contain the cardholder name, card number, expiration date, and verification code on the order-entry systems.
Customers are advised to monitor their financial statements and report any unauthorized transactions, especially locals who dined in one of Landry’s locations early in 2019.
The restaurant sector wasn’t the only one reporting a data breach recently. Wawa, with some of its 850 East Coast locations in our area, disclosed a data breach potentially affecting all of its in-store payment processing systems, in-store payment terminals and fuel dispensers, that collected customers’ payment card data. The company reported the malware first infected in-store payment processing systems after March 4, and had infected most store systems by April 22. It was detected on Dec. 10.
