Planet Hollywood and Buca di Beppo Parent Confirms 2.15 Million Customer Credit Cards Breached

Earl Enterprises confirmed the incident on its website yesterday. More than a month ago, cybersleuth extraodinaire Brian Krebs alerted the company of a discovery he made on an underground hacking forum. Someone had posted a collection of 2.15 million credit cards for sale.

Many of those, Krebs determined, had been exposed at virtually every one of the 67 Buca di Beppo locations in the U.S. Also hit were several Earl of Sandwich restaurants, Tequila Taqueria (located in Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel & Casino), Mixology 101, and Chicken Guy! (a Disney World eatery featuring recipes from celebrity chef Guy Fieri).

Large scale payment card breaches like this typically involve malware that targets point-of-sale systems. Compromised payment terminals or processing systems can harvest complete card data and upload that data to the cybercriminal behind the attack. That’s exactly what happened to Earl Enterprises.

It didn’t happen overnight, either. The company‘s official statement reveals that its systems were infected for as long as ten months — from May 2018 until just a couple of weeks ago. That’s an alarming amount of time for point-of-sale malware to go undetected.

If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the infected sites weren’t processing the volume of purchases that made the Target breach so infamous. In that incident, malware that was only active for around 20 days stole details on more than 110 million credit and debit cards.

Those of you want to find out if an Earl Enterprises property you dined at was breached, you’ll have to do a little bit of work. You can’t simply browse through a full listing. You need to choose the state, city, and restaurant from drop-down menus one at a time.

It’s worth noting that online orders were not impacted. Planet Hollywood hotels and resorts and three of Earl Enterprises’ properties — Bertucci’s, Café Hollywood, and Seaside on the Pier — received the all clear from investigators as well.

Earl Enterprises continues to work with law enforcement officials and a pair of cybersecurity firms as the full extent of the attack is determined.

What do Buca di Beppo, Planet Hollywood, Earl of Sandwich, and the L.A.