Breach confirmed by Dairy Queen

International Dairy Queen Inc was the victim of a data leak that has seen 395 systems in over 4,500 branches, and one outlet of the Orange Julius chain of fruit drink vendors, infected with malware.

Known as Backoff, the malware has  affected a number of other retailers throughout the US, breaching customer payment data.

The firm has already come under the spotlight for what was a possible issue with malware that could have affected payment cards used in certain locations in the US. After what the company considered to be a thorough investigation conducted by external forensic experts, Dairy Queen confirmed that any account information that has been compromised was leaked through a third-party company.

The firm revealed details found in the investigation report, including which locations were affected and when the malware was present. The systems held customers’ payment card data, including account names, numbers, and expiry dates.

Greg Martin, the CTO of cyber security intelligence aggregator ThreatStream, told SCMagazine.com:

“This very targeted malware emerged in just the last year and has had a devastating success rate at being able to steal [a] massive amount [sic] of credit cards from well-known retailers around the globe. We think that many more have been compromised but have not yet discovered or announced the breaches publicly.”

Hackers behind Backoff will have used advanced programming to access systems in such companies as Dairy Queen. The firm, along with any others that have been affected, may need to re-evaluate their defence systems and even advertise information security vacancies. Clearly more in-house skill is needed when it comes to cyber security.