Wendy’s announced on Thursday (July 7) that hundreds of their stores nationwide were victims of a credit and debit card hack.
Wendy’s restaurants in the River Valley and Northwest Arkansas are among the hacked.
The company first announced that they were investigating malicious cyber activity early in 2016, according to a company statement. On June 9, they found that the attack was more widespread than they originally thought.
They said in part:
“Wendy’s first reported unusual payment card activity affecting some restaurants in February 2016. In May, we confirmed that we had found evidence of malware being installed on some restaurants’ point-of-sale systems, and had worked with our investigator to disable it. On June 9th, we reported that we had discovered additional malicious cyber activity involving other restaurants. That malware has also been disabled in all franchisee restaurants where it has been discovered. We believe that both criminal cyberattacks resulted from service providers’ remote access credentials being compromised, allowing access – and the ability to deploy malware – to some franchisees’ point-of-sale systems.
We have issued the notification below to provide more information to our customers regarding this incident, our response, and the steps you can take to protect yourself. On behalf of affected franchise locations, we are also providing information about specific restaurant locations that may have been impacted by these attacks, all of which are located in the U.S., along with support for customers who may have been affected by the malware variants.
We recommend that you remain vigilant for incidents of fraud and identity theft by reviewing credit card account statements and monitoring your credit report for unauthorized activity. To assist you, Wendy’s has now arranged to offer one year of complimentary fraud consultation and identity restoration services to all customers who used a payment card at a potentially affected restaurant during the time when the restaurant may have been affected.”
To see if your Wendy’s was affected in the hack, as well as the dates when information could have been compromised, click here.
