EatStreet Data Breach Risks Customers' Information

In May, EatStreet experienced a data breach that compromised certain customers', restaurants', and deliverers' information. The service just recently disclosed the security breach.

• By Kaitlyn DeHaven
• Jun 19, 2019

EatStreet, an online and mobile food ordering service, recently disclosed a security breach that took place between May 3 and May 17.

The hacker, who is believed to be a hacker named Gnosticplayers, had access to EatStreet's database between these dates and through this was able to access information about delivery and restaurant partners, such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, as well as bank accounts and routing numbers.

For a limited number of customers, the hacker accessed payment card info, including names, credit card numbers, expiration dates, card verification codes, billing addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.

EatStreet has taken multiple notification measures to ensure everyone affected is informed. There are no law enforcement agencies involved in the ongoing investigations.

"We have enhanced the security of our systems, including reinforcing multi-factor authentication, rotating credential keys, and reviewing and updating coding practices," EatStreet said in a breach notification.

Colin Little, senior threat analyst at Centripetal Networks, said that it's unfortunate that some customers used this service for a simple food delivery and now their banking information may be compromised.

"The case of the EatStreet breach is a doomsday scenario for the average consumer where a service was used for convenience of necessity, and ended up causing a major threat to the consumer's interests," Little said. "With the number of mobile or cloud-based consumer services a person leverages day to day and the two-week time-to-detect for complete access to a database that contains some of the most sensitive PII, this event shows that consumers deserve organizations who will proactively hunt for threats to minimize the risk to consumer data."

Lisa Baergen, vice president of marketing at NuData Security, a Mastercard Company, said that once the data is stolen, it's detrimental to not only the target company, but all organizations because the hacker can make fraudulent purchases or facilitate further cybercrime. She said in light of this, organizations must figure out how to lock down their security to keep customers and other organizations secure.

"By using security layers with behavioral analytics and passive biometrics, businesses can look across multiple aspects of the user's interaction, instead of relying solely on the username, password, and other static data which could have been stolen," Baergen said. "Such techniques devalue phishing attacks and other techniques to extract data from legitimate consumers, as this is not enough to access a victim's account or make illegitimate purchases."