P.F. Chang's data breach prompts investigation

If you recently used a credit card at P.F. Chang's, listen up. Fox News reports that "the popular restaurant chain P.F. Chang's saying customers' credit card information may have been compromised. The credit and debit card data was posted for sale on a website used by cybercriminals."

Information from the credit cards was reportedly put up on the darknet website Rescator June 9. According to TechTarget, it's the same site that sold information stolen from credit cards used at Target back in November.

Brian Krebs, an independent journalist who formerly wrote for The Washington Post's Security Fix blog, reported on his blog that multiple banks are indicating the stolen credit cards were used at P.F. Chang restaurants between the beginning of March and May 19 of this year.

P.F. Chang's has locations all over the world, including in Mexico, the Philippines and Turkey.

But banks are indicating the stolen credit cards were used in restaurants in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Nevada and Florida.

Investigators still don't exactly know how the information was stolen from P.F. Chang's.

A writer for New Republic says hackers steal the information that's embedded on the card's magnetic strip. This information can then be encoded into a new credit card.

The chief brand officer for P.F. Chang's released a statement after news broke of the hack. Bloomberg published that statement, which said: "P.F. Chang's takes these matters very seriously and is currently investigating the situation, working with the authorities to learn more ... We will provide an update as soon as we have additional information."

This is the first significant data breach in the U.S. since March, when information from almost 300,000 credit and debit cards was stolen from Sally Beauty customers.