McDonald’s discloses data breach in US, Taiwan and South Korea

McDonald’s fast-food chain disclosed a data breach, hackers have stolen information belonging to customers and employees from the US, South Korea, and Taiwan.

McDonald’s, the world’s largest restaurant chain by revenue, has disclosed a data breach that impacted customers and employees from the US, South Korea, and Taiwan.

The hackers compromised the system of the company and have stolen business contact info belonging to US employees and franchises, the company pointed out that no sensitive and financial data were accessed.

The attackers also stole personal information from customers in South Korea and Taiwan, including names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses. The company states that only a small number of customers was impacted and their financial data was not exposed.

“In a message to U.S. employees, McDonald’s said the breach disclosed some business contact information for U.S. employees and franchisees, along with some information about restaurants such as seating capacity and the square footage of play areas.” reported the WSJ. “The company said no customer data was breached in the U.S., and that the employee data exposed wasn’t sensitive or personal. The company advised employees and franchisees to watch for phishing emails and to use discretion when asked for information.”

McDonald’s said that it was able to quickly identify the security breach and mitigate the threat.

“McDonald’s understands the importance of effective security measures to protect information, which is why we’ve made substantial investments to implement multiple security tools as part of our in-depth cybersecurity defense,” the WSJ added. “These tools allowed us to quickly identify and contain recent unauthorized activity on our network.”

“While we were able to close off access quickly after identification, our investigation has determined that a small number of files were accessed, some of which contained personal data,” reads a statement published by the company.

The company added that only customers in Korea and Taiwan had their data exposed.

McDonald’s is currently notifying affected customers and authorities in all impacted markets.

In April 2017, another cyber attack hit McDonald’s Canada career website and hackers stole records of 95,000 job seekers.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, data breach)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.