KFC Website Hack Leaks Customer Data

Hackers have broken into the data of KFC’s Colonel’s Club loyalty scheme after breaching the fast food chain’s website, potentially granting access to the information of 1.2 million members.

KFC alerted its customers to the hack and prompted them to reset their account credentials, particularly if they are used with other services, even though the company does not believe a high number of its customers have been impacted.

“Our monitoring systems have found a small number of Colonel’s Club accounts may have been compromised as a result of our website being targeted,” the fried-chicken joint said.

“Whilst it’s unlikely you have been impacted, we advise that you change your password as a precaution.”

Zinger of a hack

The company more versed with producing ‘finger-lickin’ good’ yet riotously unhealthy fried chicken, said it is taking action to tackle such online threats and will be introducing additional security measures to safeguard its customers’ accounts and “stop this kind of thing happening again”.

Such a response is notable as more tech-related companies such as Yahoo have arguably been slow to respond to major data breaches they have suffered. The transparency of the company is also positive in comparison to the less open activities of other firms that have suffered breaches at the hands of hackers and cyber criminals.

KFC also told ITV News that is does not store any payment information belonging to its customers, so they can rest easy knowing that their financial details are not at risk.

“We don’t store credit card details as part of our Colonel’s Club rewards scheme, so no financial data was compromised,” said Brad Scheiner, head of IT at KFC UK & Ireland, who said 30 of its 1.2 million members had been targeted by the hack.

It would appear that the knock-on effects of KFC’s hack will not be significant, unlike the Yahoo data breach which encroached upon the operations of both Sky and BT.

And such hacks seem to be on the rise, so much so that we have a rundown of the top 10 most significant hacks in recent years.

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