Dairy Queen confirms hack of customer card data at 395 stores

Ice cream and fast food chain Dairy Queen is the latest retailer to reveal a hack of its customer data.

The company said Thursday that hackers may have gained access to customer names, credit and debit card numbers and expiration dates at 395 stores between August and October. The company said it has fixed the malware problem.

International Dairy Queen Inc. has about 4,500 franchised stores in the U.S. It's also the parent of the Orange Julius chain, and one stand-alone Orange Julius store was breached.

Dairy Queen said there's no evidence Social Security numbers, card PIN numbers or email addresses were stolen.

The Edina, Minnesota-based company, which is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is offering customers free identity repair services.

Dairy Queen's press statement confirming the breach is below:

International Dairy Queen, Inc. today confirmed that the systems of some DQ® locations and one Orange Julius® location in the U.S. had been infected with the widely-reported Backoff malware that is targeting retailers across the country.  The company previously indicated that it was investigating a possible malware intrusion that may have affected some payment cards used at certain DQ locations in the U.S.  Upon learning of the issue, the company conducted an extensive investigation and retained external forensic experts to help determine the facts.  Because nearly all DQ and Orange Julius locations are independently owned and operated, the company worked closely with affected franchise owners, as well as law enforcement authorities and the payment card brands, to assess the nature and scope of the issue.  The investigation revealed that a third-party vendor’s compromised account credentials were used to access systems at some locations.

The investigation has established the following:

• The Backoff malware only impacted payment card data at 395 of the more than 4,500 U.S. locations.
• The time periods during which the Backoff malware was present on the relevant systems vary by location.  A list of impacted locations, as well as the relevant time periods, is available at www.dq.com/datasecurityincident/. 
• The affected systems contained payment card customer names, numbers and expiration dates.  The company has no evidence that other customer personal information, such as Social Security numbers, PINs or email addresses, was compromised as a result of this malware infection.
• Based on our investigation, we are confident that this malware has been contained.

“We are committed to working with and supporting our affected DQ and Orange Julius franchise owners to address this incident,” said John Gainor, president and CEO of International Dairy Queen.  “Our customers continue to be our top priority.”  The company is offering free identity repair services for one year to customers in the U.S. who used their payment card at one of the impacted DQ locations or the one Orange Julius location during the relevant time period.  The company has posted information about these services and other steps that affected DQ and Orange Julius customers can take to help protect themselves on the company’s website at www.dq.com/datasecurityincident/.

Major retailers including Home Depot, Target and Michael's have been the target of cyberattacks in the past year.