The Missouri-based cinema chain, B&B Theaters, is under investigation for a possible two-year breach of credit card credentials following a tip-off from a banking partner.
Estimates from security experts like Brian Krebs find that customers may have been exposed from April 2015 till April 2017, leaving an unsettling window of opportunity for attackers.
The investigation is currently being conducted by security firm, Trustwave. The investigation by the firm “did not conclude that customer’s data was at risk on all B&B systems for the entirety of the breach.”
It’s highly likely the hackers infiltrated the organizations POS systems to scrape card magstripe data. This issue is alleviated with the implementation of the Chip & PIN credit cards and card readers, which has been mandated by the PCI-DSS Compliance Standard to help protect card data.
The theory is that, by encrypting card details as soon as they hit the card swipe or PED (Pin Entry Device), the POS is then only handling pre-encrypted card data and is therefore de-scoped. This doesn’t mean the POS is secure or immune to malware, just that card data no longer exists in a non-encrypted format.
Time and time again, POS terminals have been proven to be easy targets for criminals and simply too sensitive to leave them without defense measures implemented.
It’s important that organizations protect their POS terminals by implementing a hardened build standard with precision change detection (the PCI DSS recommends using the CIS Benchmarks as the best hardening standard to adopt). This combined with Breach Detection Technology (FIM-based Host Intrusion Detection Systems) will ensure that if a breach is successful, you will be alerted to the fact immediately, so that any card data loss can be stopped.
Read this article on Info Security Magazine