Credit Card Breach At A Zoo Near You

Service Systems Associates, a company that serves gift shops and eateries at zoos and cultural centers across the United States, has acknowledged a breach of its credit and debit card processing systems.

ssaSeveral banking industry sources told KrebsOnSecurity they have detected a pattern of fraud on cards that were all used at zoo gift shops operated by Denver-basd SSA. On Wednesday morning, CBS Detroit moved a story citing zoo officials there saying the SSA was investigating a breach involving point-of-sale malware.

Contacted about the findings, SSA confirmed that it was the victim of a data security breach.

“The violation occurred in the point of sale systems located in the gift shops of several of our clients,” the company said in a written statement. “This means that if a guest used a credit or debit card in the gift shop at one of our partner facilities between March 23 and June 25, 2015, the information on that card may have been compromised.”

SSA said it has been working with law enforcement officials and a third-party forensic investigator, Sikich, to investigate the breach.

“Though the investigation into this attack continues, the malware that caused the breach was identified and removed,” the statement continued. “All visitors should feel confident using credit or debit cards anywhere in these facilities.”

The company declined to name the individual locations that were impacted by the breach, but financial industry sources say the breach likely involves SSA concession and gift shops at zoo locations in at least two dozen cities, including:


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A Fresh Look At The Veterans’ Scandal

Let’s set the stage for discussing the scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs: A new president, promising hope and change, campaigns to help veterans and improve their medical care. He appoints a decorated war hero to head the Veterans Bureau. But soon thousands of veterans complain about wait times and lack of treatment. On the financial side, leaders at the Veterans Bureau cook the books, and make fortunes buying and selling land to build new VA hospitals. Taxpayers lose millions of dollars in fraud and the medical needs of veterans are often ignored.

Sound familiar? It should. That’s the story of President Warren Harding and Charles Forbes, the man Harding chose as the first head of the Veterans Bureau. From the start, the Veterans Bureau was corrupt and mismanaged. Government was not capable of sound administration in the 1920s, under President Harding, and not much has improved ninety years later under President Obama. The fraud at Veterans Affairs then and now may be a foreshadowing of government-run health care for the nation.

The idea of hospital care for veterans began after World War I. Before that, war veterans received small pensions if they could show they were injured in military service to the point they could not do their civilian jobs. The American Legion became a powerful lobby after WWI, and free health care for vets became a reality in the 1920s. A more financially sound idea for providing medical care would have been to give vouchers to veterans for medical services at existing hospitals. But politicians saw advantages to setting up special veterans’ hospitals in their political districts–Congressmen, under a system of government-run hospitals, could take credit with voters for building new hospitals locally for veterans.

The good intentions of medical help for veterans turned into scandal and fraud right from the start. President Harding and the many supporters of the new veterans’ hospitals did not understand that new incentives were in place for corruption, not health care. Lt. Col. Charles Forbes, the new head of the Veterans Bureau, won the Distinguished Service Medal in WWI. But once in power in government, he and his friends made millions of dollars from selling high priced land for the new hospitals, and then overcharging to build them.


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