Madison Square Garden Data Breach, Credit Card Details Stolen By Hackers
The database of United States based, multi-purpose indoor arena Madison Square Garden has been breached by the hackers. Yesterday, the company informed its users about this data breach. According to MSG (Madison Square Garden), security experts have found a Point of Sale (PoS) malware in their payment processing systems. This malware was tracing all the information of swiped cards. The shocking fact is, the malware was tracing credit card from last year and MSG came to know about this a few days ago. The stolen data include credit card numbers, card expiry dates, cardholder names and its internal verification codes. We can say that hackers can make unauthorized payments from these cards.
Affected Customers
The exact number of affected customers is not yet clear. According to MSG, all those customers who have physically used their credit cards between 9 November 2015- 24 October 2016 to make payments for food, drinks and merchandise at PoS systems are affected by this data breach. Theater at Madison Square Garden, Beacon Theater, Radio City Music Hall and Chicago Theater are the most affected venues. If you have made any payment at these locations between 9th Nov 2015 and 24th Oct 2016, you are in trouble. All those credit cards, which have been used by customers for online payments are safe. The breached data is only related to PoS systems of Madison Square Garden.
How did it happen?
A special type of malware had been installed by the hackers in the PoS systems of MSG by hacking into payment processing systems of MSG. Security experts also found foot prints of an external unauthorized access in the internal payment processing systems during the investigation. After tracing all the information of credit cards, malware was forwarding it towards a command and control server. Hackers were controlling this server through remote commands. Many hospitality firms are using third party PoS systems and we don’t know which type of PoS systems have been used by Madison Square Garden.
Nowadays, hackers are targeting hospitality industry to breach databases. Same incident happened with Norwalk (United States) based luxury hotels chain “HEI Hotels” in August 2016. A PoS malware was stealing payment card details from their various hotels.
A few days ago, hackers hacked the famous “Casino Rama Resort” of Canada which is located in Ontario. They steal all the sensitive information of its customers and employees.
The “INDIAN ATM details hacked” incident also affected millions of users and major banks of INDIA such as HDFC, State Bank of INDIA, AXIS Bank, IDBI Bank and Federal Bank blocked millions of ATM cards to prevent its users from fraud.
In the case of Madison Square Garden Data Breach, the malware was present in PoS systems and normal users can’t do anything to protect his credit card details. The company is responsible for it. But, if hackers are stealing your payment card details during online payments, it’s your fault. Earlier, we have published an article to give security tips to our readers, which are helpful to protect payment card details from cyber crooks. Read that article: here.
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