Entertainment giant National Amusements says more than 82,000 people affected by cyberattack

National Amusements – which controls a sprawling empire of popular entertainment and information brands – announced a data breach last week that affected more than 82,000 people.

The Massachusetts-based company said it detected “suspicious activity” on its network almost a year ago, on December 15, 2022.

An investigation revealed that the hackers gained access to files on the company’s systems between December 13 and 15. The information disclosed includes names, financial account numbers, credit card numbers, debit card numbers and PIN codes.

The company did not respond to requests for comment on why it took a year to notify victims that their information had been stolen, but told regulators in Maine that their investigation concluded on August 23.

National Amusements is best known as the company that owns the Paramount movie studio, CBS, MTV and thousands of movie theaters in the United States, United Kingdom and Latin America. The company did not respond to questions about whether the breach had been reported to British authorities, who say companies must report incidents within 72 hours.

“After learning of this event, we have decided to investigate and respond, assess the security of affected National Amusements systems and identify any potentially impacted data,” they said. said in violation notification letters to victims.

The 82,128 people affected will benefit from one year of free identity protection services.

Primordial suffered a data breach in August linked to the exploitation of the vulnerability in the MOVEit file transfer software.

After an investigation, the studio discovered that the person’s names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers and relationship to Paramount had been disclosed in the breach.

This incident followed an announcement in July by children’s television giant Nickelodeon – which is owned by Paramount – that it was investigating an alleged breach after hackers claimed to have stolen 500GB of data.

Screenshots of files would have been taken included files on some of Nickelodeon’s files the biggest titlesincluding Rugrats, Avatar: The Last Airbender, SpongeBob SquarePants, Danny Phantom, The Smurfs, Monster High and much more.

It does not appear that National Amusements’ violation is related to Paramount’s or Nickelodeon’s violations.

In the middle of growing debtsNational Amusements was in the news this week for its alleged interest in sell Paramount and other elements of its business to competitors.

Jonathan Greig is a breaking news reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked as a journalist around the world since 2014. Before returning to New York, he worked for media outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.