Was Noodles & Company Breached?

Restaurant chain Noodles & Company is probing a credit card breach that is said to have hit several of its 500 stores.

The revelation comes after several financial institutions reportedly saw a pattern of fraudulent charges on customer cards, which were used between January of this year and now, Krebs on Security reported.

“We are currently investigating some unusual activity reported to us Tuesday, May 16, 2016, by our credit card processor. Once we received this report, we alerted law enforcement officials, and we are working with third-party forensic experts. Our investigation is ongoing, and we will continue to share information,” Noodles & Company said in a statement.

The fraud attack occurred as the Broomfield, CO-based company was in the process of testing and implementing EMV technology — a situation which many businesses around the U.S. are currently dealing with after failing to make the upgrades in time for the EMV liability shift.

“The ongoing program we have in place to aggressively test and implement chip-based systems across our network is moving forward,” the company said. “We are actively working with our key business partners to deploy this system as soon as they are ready.”

Reports on the breach at Noodles & Company come just a week after fast food restaurant chain Wendy’s confirmed a 2015 major credit card breach that affected close to 300 of its 5,500 store locations.

At the moment, details on the malware that skimmed information off of credit cards being used at Noodles & Company remain unclear. It is most likely similar to the one used at Wendy’s, where fraudsters could skim credit card details in real time as customers swiped their credit cards to make transactions.