By William Knowles @c4i

Senior Editor

InfoSec News

September 30, 2014

AB Acquisition LLC and Supervalu Inc. are the newest groups of retailers that have been hit by security breaches this year. This includes Aaron Brothers, Bartell Hotels, CVS, eBay, Goodwill Industries International Inc., Home Depot, Jimmy Johns, Michaels Stores, Neiman Marcus, Recreational Equipment Inc., Sally Beauty Supply, and Sears.

On September 29, 2014, AB Acquisition LLC, which operates Albertsons stores under Albertson’s LLC and ACME Markets, Jewel-Osco, and Shaw’s and Star Markets under New Albertson’s, Inc., was notified by its third-party IT services provider, Supervalu Inc. of a separate, more recent, attempted criminal intrusion seeking to obtain payment card information used in some of its stores. AB Acquisition has been informed that a different malware was used in this recently discovered incident that was used in the incident previously announced on August 14, 2014. The investigations into both this incident and the earlier incident are ongoing.

Supervalu Inc. (NYSE: SVU) announced on September 29, 2014 that they also experienced a criminal intrusion into the portion of its computer network that processes payment card transactions at Supervalu’s Shop ’n Save, Shoppers Food & Pharmacy, four franchised Cub Foods stores in Hastings, Shakopee, Roseville (Har Mar) and White Bear Lake, MN, where implementation of the enhanced protective technology had not yet been completed.

For these four franchised stores, Supervalu Inc. believes that the malware may have been successful in capturing account numbers, and in some cases also the expiration date, other numerical information and/or the cardholder’s name, from payment cards used at some checkout lanes during the period of August 27 (at the earliest) through September 21 (at the latest), 2014.

Both companies discovered that, in what it believes to have been late August or early September 2014, an intruder installed different malware into the portion of its computer network that processes payment card transactions

Because the point of sale systems are different across AB Acquisition divisions, Albertsons stores in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas and their two Super Saver Foods Stores in Northern Utah were not impacted by this incident. However, Albertsons stores in Southern California, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and Southern Utah were impacted. In addition, ACME Markets in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey; Jewel-Osco stores in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana; and Shaw’s and Star Markets stores in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island were affected by this new incident.

AB Acquisition LLC and Supervalu Inc. have made no determination that any cardholder data was in fact stolen by the intruder. Given the continuing nature of the investigation, it is possible that time frames, locations, at-risk data, and/or other facts in addition to those described above will be identified in the future.

Both AB Acquisition LLC and Supervalu Inc. customers who used their payment cards at those locations listed above during the relevant time period will receive 12 months of complimentary consumer identity protection services through AllClear ID.

Matt Baume via Compfight