National Amusements, the movie theater chain and parent giant of media giants Paramount and CBS, has 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 file with the Maine Attorney General Hackers stole personal information about 82,128 people during a data breach in December 2022.
Details of the December 2022 hack did not emerge until a year later, after the company began notifying those affected last week.
According to Maine’s notice, the company discovered the breach months later in August 2023, but did not say what specific personal information was taken. The data breach notification filed with the state of Maine said the hackers also stole financial information, such as bank account numbers or credit card numbers with security codes, passwords or secrets associated with them.
The stolen data may relate to company employees where a data breach notification letter was provided by the company’s head of human resources.
But the media giant said little about the hack, or whether the personal information of its customers or users was also affected. It’s not clear what type of cyberattack the company suffered, or whether the company received a ransom demand — or later paid the hackers.
Rachel Lulay, a spokeswoman for National Amusements, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Spokespeople for CBS and Paramount also had no comment.
National Amusements owns more than 1,500 movie theaters across the United States, but the company is best known for its controlling stake in Paramount and CBS following the Viacom-CBS merger in 2019.
Paramount disclosed a separate security incident in August, according to File with the Massachusetts Attorney General, where hackers took personal information from an unspecified number of customers. The hackers stole Paramount customers’ names and dates of birth, as well as Social Security numbers or other government-issued identification numbers, according to the notice.
Disclosure: Zach Whitaker previously worked at CBS before August 2018.