Sally Beauty Holdings said it is investigating another potential payment card breach, a year after reporting a similar cyberattack.
The retailer, which operates nearly 2,800 stores in the U.S., said it had received reports of “unusual activity” involving card payments used at some of its stores during the last week of April. Law enforcement has been in contact with us, the company said Monday.
It did not provide any information on whether the second incident is related to last year's attack. "Until this investigation is complete, it is difficult to determine with certainty the extent or nature of any potential incident," according to their statement.
Last February, attackers stole payment card information from several Sally Beauty stores between February 21 and February 28. Malware was installed on point-of-sale systems, which collected data from the magnetic strips on the back of payment cards.
It is suspected that the attackers collected Track 2 data from the cards, according to Sally Beauty's 2014 annual report. The magnetic stripes contain three data tracks, and the second contains the payment card number and expiration date.
Sally Beauty's most recent problem came when the company had to upgrade its point-of-sale systems in all its US stores and its IT systems.
It's not the only major business to report that it may have been attacked again. White Lodging Services of Merrillville, Ind., which manages Marriott-branded hotels, confirmed a second breach last month, following the first it reported in February 2014.
Retailers are suffering from cyberattacks aimed at stealing payment card data, which is then offered for sale on black-market websites.
Hackers stole 56 million payment cards from Home Depot, which was breached between April and September 2014. The same company suffered another breach in which 40 million debit and credit card numbers were stolen in an attack in late 2013.
Both breaches were attributed to malware in point-of-sale systems, which process card transactions. The type of malware, known as a RAM scraper, collects card details while they are in a computer's memory.
