Late last week, the websites of Domino’s Pizza in France and Belgium were hacked by a hacker group that calls itself Rex Mundi.  As a result of the hacking, Rex Mundi was able to obtain information including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and passwords of approximately 600,000 Domino’s customers in France and Belgium.  Rex Mundi then threatened to publicly disclose the information on Monday, June 16th unless a ransom of $46,000 was paid.  As of today, Rex Mundi has not disclosed the information although it is not clear whether or not Domino’s paid the ransom.  This type of extortion is nothing new to Rex Mundi which has done so repeatedly in the past.  In 2012 it hacked and stole loan application information of thousands of customers of the payday loan company AmeriCash Advance.

TIPS

Although financial information, such as credit card data was not a part of this security breach, there is much to be concerned about for customers whose information was compromised.  Spear phishing by which victims are lured into clicking on malware infected links in legitimate-looking emails that are directed to them specifically by name rather than to “Dear Customer” often follows the release of names and email information to criminals eager to exploit this information.  Also, particularly dangerous is the unfortunate practice of many people to use the same password for all of their accounts thereby putting the online banking accounts of victims of data breaches in danger.  It is important to have a different, distinct and complex password for all of your accounts.