Sonic Costumers Suffer Massive Credit Card Hack

(RTTNews) - Drive-in burger chain Sonic Corp. (SONC) has confirmed a credit-card related data breach that has affected an unknown number of its store payment systems. The news caused the company's shares to fall more than 4 percent in intraday trade on Wednesday.

Brian Krebs, an independent journalist who investigates breaches, reported late Tuesday on his KrebsOnSecurity website that a data breach in Sonic's payment systems may have led to a "fire sale" on millions of stolen credit and debit card accounts that are now being peddled in shadowy underground cybercrime stores.

A batch of some five million credit and debit card accounts were first put up for sale on September 18 in a credit-card theft bazaar called Joker's Stash, Krebs said.

Sonic said it was informed last week by its credit card processor of "unusual activity" regarding credit cards used at its restaurants. The company's shares fell as much as 4.4 percent to $23.52 on Wednesday, its biggest fall within one day since August 8.

In a statement, Sonic said, "We are working to understand the nature and scope of this issue, as we know how important this is to our guests. We immediately engaged third-party forensic experts and law enforcement when we heard from our processor. While law enforcement limits the information we can share, we will communicate additional information as we're able."

Sonic has nearly 3,600 drive-in locations across 45 U.S. states, serving approximately 3 million customers every day.

This is not the major first data breach this year. In early September, credit reporting giant Equifax Inc. reported a hacking incident in which the personal information of approximately 143 million U.S. consumers were potentially compromised.

In May, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. disclosed a data breach, saying that hackers installed malicious software within its point-of-sale devices to gain access to customer data.