Hoping to forcibly take a slice of a pizza chain's pie, a collective of hackers demanded cash to preclude the group's release of customer records it had stolen from Domino's French and Belgian databases.
The hacker group identifying itself as Rex Mundi, meaning "Kings of the World" in Latin, made the extortion threat to the pizza chain at some point during the second week of June, but the exact date the threat was placed remains unclear.
The hacker group demanded €30,000 from Domino Pizza, roughly just over $40,000, and threatened to release data on French and Belgium customers the group claimed it obtained from the pizza chain's database, according to Business Insider. Rex Mundi claimed it had access to approximately 660,000 of Domino's customer accounts, 592,000 from French patrons of the pizza company and 68,000 from Belgian customers.
Domino's France confirmed the breach on June 13 via its Twitter account and recommended its customer changed their passwords. The Twitter message didn't make light of the threat from Rex Mundi, classifying the hacker group as professionals with the capability to make good on it threat of releasing customer account details.
Domino's Pizza has stood firm in the face of the threat, opting to report the incident to law enforcement agencies in France rather than complying with the ransom. A contributing factor to the pizza company's noncompliance may have been the absence of financial details in the customer accounts.
A spokesperson from Domino stated that compromised data included customer names, phone numbers and email addresses, according to ITNews. The spokesperson also stated that financial data was safe from the breach, as Domino's Pizza doesn't store its customer's bank account or credit card details, ITNews reported.
Rex Mundi's ultimatum ended June 16 at 2 p.m. It claimed it would release the hacked information if Domino's Pizza didn't comply with the ransom before the stated time.
While Domino's Pizza has stated that its systems are protected from intrusions by encryption, the hackers may have used a backdoor into an old site used in the past by the pizza chain in Europe.
Rex Mundi has made good in past threats, when the group released information on loan applications after payday lender AmeriCash Advance refused to pay what the hacker group described as an "idiot tax." The hacker group wanted between $15,000 and $20,000 in ransom from AmeriCash Advance, after accessing the lending institution's site through one of the company's unsecured servers.
