“Our credit card processor notified us last week of unusual movement regarding credit cards used at SONIC,” explains a statement the organization issued to News. “The safety of our guests’ information is very valuable to SONIC. We are operating to understand the type and scope of this issue, as we know how valuable this is to our guests. We quickly engaged third-party forensic experts and law enforcement when we learned from our processor. While law enforcement limits the data we can share, we will publish additional information as we are able.”
Christi Woodworth, vice president of public relationships at Sonic, said the research is still in its early stages, and the organization does not yet know how many or which of its properties may be impacted.
The accounts clearly stolen from Sonic are part of a group of cards that Joker’s Stash is calling “Firetigerrr,” and they are listed by city, state and ZIP code. This geographic specificity enables potential buyers to obtain only cards that were stolen from Sonic customers who exist near them, thus avoiding a public anti-fraud defense in which a financial institution might charge out-of-state transactions from a recognized compromised card.
Malicious hackers typically steal credit card data from businesses that accept cards by cutting into point-of-sale systems remotely and seeding those systems with wicked software that can copy account data saved on a card’s magnetic stripe. Thieves can use that data to clone the cards and then use the counterfeits to buy high-priced commodities from electronics stores and big-box retailers.
Prices for the cards shown in the Firetigerr batch are slightly higher than for cards stolen in other violations, likely because this batch is very fresh and unlikely to have been removed by card-issuing banks yet.
Most of the cards vary in price from $25 to $50, and the price is determined by a number of factors, including the type of card issued Amex, Visa, MasterCard, etc the card’s level classic, standard, signature, platinum, etc. whether the paper is debit or credit and the issuing bank.
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