Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Forever 21 Payment Systems Infected With Malware for 7 Months

Los Angeles-based fashion retailer Forever 21 informed customers last week that some of its payment processing systems had been infected with malware for a period of more than 7 months.

Los Angeles-based fashion retailer Forever 21 informed customers last week that some of its payment processing systems had been infected with malware for a period of more than 7 months.

The company learned about the breach in mid-October after being alerted by a third party, and customers were first notified on November 14.

Forever 21 operates over 800 stores in 57 countries around the world, and it’s the 5th largest specialty retailer in the United States. The firm has yet to provide information on which stores are affected. It’s still working on determining if stores outside the U.S. are impacted as they use a different payment processing system, but reassured customers that its website, forever21.com, has not been breached.

According to the retailer, hackers penetrated its systems and installed a piece of malware designed to steal payment card data as it was being routed through point-of-sale (PoS) devices. The company has been using encryption technology to protect sensitive data, but the system was “not always on,” allowing unauthorized access to payment card information.

The company’s investigation revealed that in most cases the malware was only able to collect card numbers, expiration dates and internal verification codes, but cardholder names were also compromised in some instances.

The malware was present on Forever 21 systems between April 3 and November 18, 2017. In some stores the malware was active throughout this period, but some locations were only affected for a few days or several weeks.

“Additionally, Forever 21 stores have a device that keeps a log of completed payment card transaction authorizations,” Forever 21 said in a statement. “When encryption was off, payment card data was being stored in this log. In a group of stores that were involved in this incident, malware was installed on the log devices that was capable of finding payment card data from the logs, so if encryption was off on a POS device prior to April 3, 2017 and that data was still present in the log file at one of these stores, the malware could have found that data.”

This is not the first time Forever 21 has informed customers of a security incident involving payment cards. Back in 2008, the company said nearly 99,000 cards may have been compromised in a series of hacker attacks spanning between 2004 and 2007.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Forever 21 is not the only clothing retailer to disclose a data breach in recent years. Brooks Brothers and Buckle also reported finding malware on their payment systems last year, and Eddie Bauer informed customers of a cyber intrusion in 2016.

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Data Protection

The cryptopocalypse is the point at which quantum computing becomes powerful enough to use Shor’s algorithm to crack PKI encryption.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

CISO Strategy

SecurityWeek spoke with more than 300 cybersecurity experts to see what is bubbling beneath the surface, and examine how those evolving threats will present...

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

CISO Conversations

Joanna Burkey, CISO at HP, and Kevin Cross, CISO at Dell, discuss how the role of a CISO is different for a multinational corporation...