Forever 21, Inc. has provided an update on the payment card security incident that affected certain Forever 21 stores between April 2017 and November 2017.
Forever 21 summarized the security investigation findings in a statement:Â
“The investigation found that encryption was off and malware was installed on some devices in some U.S. stores at varying times during the period from April 3, 2017 to November 18, 2017. In some stores, this scenario occurred for only a few days or several weeks, and in some stores this scenario occurred for most or all of the timeframe. Each Forever 21 store has multiple POS devices, and in most instances only one or a few of the POS devices were involved. Additionally, Forever 21 stores have a device that keeps a log of completed payment card transaction authorizations. When encryption was off, payment card data was being stored in this log. In a group of stores that were involved in this incident, malware was installed on the log devices that was capable of finding payment card data from the logs, so if encryption was off on a POS device prior to April 3, 2017 and that data was still present in the log file at one of these stores, the malware could have found that data.”
Forever 21 first reported the incident back on November 14, 2017.Â