NEW YORK — Luxury merchant Neiman Marcus confirmed Saturday that thieves stole some of its customers’ payment card information and made unauthorized charges over the holiday season, becoming the second retailer in recent weeks to announce it had fallen victim to a cybersecurity attack.
The hacking, coming weeks after Target Corp. revealed its own breach, underscores the increasing challenges that merchants have in thwarting security breaches.
Ginger Reeder, spokeswoman for Dallas-based Neiman Marcus Group Ltd., said in an e-mail Saturday that the retailer had been notified in mid-December by its credit card processor about potentially unauthorized payment activity following customer purchases at stores.
On Jan. 1, a forensics firm confirmed evidence that the upscale retailer was a victim of a criminal cyber-security intrusion and that some customers’ credit and debit cards were possibly compromised.
Reeder wouldn’t estimate how many customers might be affected but said the merchant is notifying customers whose cards it now knows were used fraudulently. Neiman Marcus, which operates more than 40 upscale stores and clearance stores, is working with the Secret Service on the breach, she said.
“We have begun to contain the intrusion and have taken significant steps to further enhance information security,” Reeder wrote.
The revelations come as Target disclosed Friday that its data theft was significantly more extensive and affected millions more shoppers than the company announced in December.
Target said hackers stole personal information from as many as 70 million customers as part of a data breach it discovered last month. Target announced Dec. 19 that about 40 million credit and debit card accounts had been affected by a data breach that happened from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15.
Robert Siciliano, a security expert with McAfee, a computer security software maker, said it is possible Neiman Marcus doesn’t yet know the extent of the breach. He said he thinks that the two thefts were likely committed by the same organized group, based on his experience and the fact that the incidents happened around the same time.
