Popular Chinese restaurant suffers security breach

The latest in a series of cybercrimes committed against high-volume retailers has been reported by popular Chinese restaurant P.F. Chang’s. The chain reported the breach in an official statement issued this Monday, August 4. P.F. Chang’s has locations all across the nation and has been known to draw everyone from families looking for a casual night out to students taking cooking school online. Though the chain has a vast scattering of franchises, it appears that only 33 locations were affected, the majority of them in California.

The statement, which made clear that the restaurant was first made aware of the breach in June, claimed that information may have been remotely pulled from credit and debit cards used for payment at some of the franchise locations.

“We have reason to believe that the intruder may have stolen some data from certain debit and credit cards that were used during specified time frames at 33 P.F. Chang’s China Bistro branded restaurant locations in the continental United States,” it said.

The restaurant, also encouraged those affected to contact the institutions issuing their cards in order to place a ‘fraud alert’ on their accounts. These alerts flag the affected persons accounts in their banks systems, causing the bank to issue additional identity verification checks during suspect purchases. P.F. Chang’s China Bistro has also offered to provide identity protection services for those whose information was stolen, free of charge.

In the statement, CEO Rick Federico indicated that the breach had been resolved and any credit or debit cards used for payment at the restaurant chain after June 11, 2014 did not suffer any risk. In order to ensure that the entire group of people whose information was compromised receive assistance, the restaurant has also published and publicly released a comprehensive list of all franchise locations affected by the security breach.