Malware Allowed Hackers To Access Credit Card Transaction Data At Staples Stores

The superstitious belief “bad news always comes in threes” has been proven right at this time of the year. First we had the Hackers Shutdown Computers At Sony Pictures & Release Filenames of Stolen Data which was followed by a revelation that employees at the internet governing body How Was ICANN Hacked & What Information Did The Hackers Managed To Steal? became victims to a spear phishing attack and now we have news that Staples, the American chain of office supplies stores suffered a breach in its systems that might have allowed the people behind this attack to gain access to transaction data of its customers. Staples executives say that a small percentage of its stores (0.08%) were affected in this attack.


In the month of August, cyber criminals had managed to deploy malware at some point-of-sale systems at 115 stores across the US. The company’s security experts were able to detect this malware by mid-September and took appropriate action to resolve this issue. Staples believes that this malware would have allowed the hackers to gain access to customers’ credit information such as names, payment card numbers, expiration dates, and card verification codes. The numbers though are pretty scary. Staples admits that credit information from 1.16 million payment cards may have been stolen during August to September 2014. The company also admits that fraudulent cards were used at four of its stores in Manhattan, New York but they also state that these payments had nothing to do with the aforementioned breach.

Staples is now working with payment card companies and law enforcement officials to sort this issue. They will be offering identity protection services such as credit monitoring, identity theft insurance, and a free credit report to all the customers who used their credit cards for paying at the affected stores whose list can be found #-Link-Snipped-#.

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