Rutter's Suffers POS Malware Attack Exposing Payment Cards
Rutter's, a chain of convenience stores and gas stations with 72 locations in Central Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland, has provided a notice to its customers of a data breach incident.
Rutter’s recently received a report from a third party suggesting there may have been unauthorized access to data from payment cards that were used at some Rutter’s locations. Rutter's says they launched an investigation, in which cybersecurity firms were engaged to assist. They also notified law enforcement.
On January 14, 2020, the investigation identified evidence indicating that an unauthorized actor may have accessed payment card data from cards used on point-of-sale (POS) devices at some fuel pumps and inside some of our convenience stores through malware installed on the payment processing systems. The malware searched for track data (which sometimes has the cardholder name in addition to card number, expiration date, and internal verification code) read from a payment card as it was being routed through the payment processing systems.
"However, chip-enabled (EMV) POS terminals are used inside our convenience stores. EMV cards generate a unique code that is validated for each transaction, and the code cannot be reused. As a result, for EMV cards inserted into the chip-reader on the EMV POS devices in our convenience stores, only card number and expiration date (and not the cardholder name or internal verification code) were involved. In addition, it appears that the malware did not copy data from all of the payment cards used during the period that it was present on a given payment processing system. There is no indication that other customer information was accessed," says Rutter's.
The specific timeframes when data from cards used at the locations involved may have been accessed vary by location over the general timeframe beginning October 1, 2018 through May 29, 2019. There is one location where access to card data may have started August 30, 2018 and nine additional locations where access to card data may have started as early as September 20, 2018. A list of the locations involved and specific timeframes is available here.
Payment card transactions at Rutter’s car washes, ATM’s, and lottery machines in Rutter’s stores were not involved, says Rutter's.
The malware has been removed, and Rutter's says they have implemented enhanced security measures.
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