National Amusements, the giant parent company of movie theater chain, media giant Paramount and CBS, confirmed that it suffered a data breach in which hackers stole the personal information of tens of thousands of people.
The private media group said in a legally required filing with the Maine Attorney General that hackers stole the personal information of 82,128 people in a December 2022 data breach.
Details of the leak, which occurred in December 2022, were revealed a year later when the company began notifying those affected last week.
The company discovered the breach a few months later, in August 2023, but did not disclose exactly what personal information was stolen, according to Maine’s notice. The hackers also stole financial information, such as bank account or credit card numbers and related security codes, passwords or secrets, according to the data breach notification filed in Maine.
Because the data breach notification letter was submitted by the company’s human resources director, the stolen data may be related to company employees.
But the media giant has said little about the leak or whether the personal information of its customers or users was also affected. It’s unclear what kind of cyberattack the company suffered, or whether it received a ransom demand or subsequently paid the ransom to the hackers.
National Amusements spokesperson Rachel Luray did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Spokespersons for CBS and Paramount also had no comment.
National Amusements owns more than 1,500 movie theaters in the United States, but the company is best known for holding controlling stakes in Paramount and CBS after Viacom merged with CBS in 2019.
Paramount disclosed a separate security incident in August in which hackers stole the personal information of an unknown number of customers, according to documents filed with the Massachusetts attorney general. The hackers stole the names and dates of birth of Paramount customers, as well as Social Security numbers or other government-issued identification numbers, the notice said.
Revealed: Zack Whittaker worked at CBS until August 2018.
