Nightclub Giant RCI Hospitality Reports Data Breach

Adult nightclub giant RCI Hospitality Holdings on Monday disclosed a cybersecurity incident that exposed sensitive personal information.

According to an SEC filing, the company’s RCI Internet Services subsidiary discovered on March 23 that an insecure direct object reference (IDOR) vulnerability in an IIS web server allowed access to personal information.

An investigation concluded earlier this month showed that the incident began on March 19.

The company said the data breach involved unauthorized access to the information of “numerous” independent contractors, including their names, dates of birth, contact information, SSNs, and driver’s license numbers.

“To the Company’s knowledge, the unauthorized actor has not publicly disseminated the data,” RCI told the SEC. “None of our customer information or financial systems were accessed.”

The company also noted that its business operations were not affected and does not believe the incident will have a material impact.

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It’s unclear how many individuals are impacted by the incident, but RCI Hospitality is one of the largest adult nightclub operators in the United States, with dozens of locations. The company owns brands such as Rick’s and Tootsie’s, and its portfolio also includes sports bars and dance clubs.

IDOR vulnerabilities allow an attacker to access data simply by changing a value in a web link or request. It occurs when a website uses an identifier (such as an account number or file name) to retrieve a record but fails to verify that the user requesting it has the necessary permissions. For example, a user logged into ‘account=101’ might change the URL to ‘account=102’ and gain access to another person’s private information.

No known cybercrime group appears to have taken credit for the attack on RCI Hospitality.

While RCI described the incident as ‘unauthorized access’, there is a small possibility that it’s related to activities carried out by security researchers.

IDOR vulnerabilities have been exploited by malicious actors to gain access to data, but there have also been a few instances where organizations labeled IDOR-enabled access by security researchers as ‘unauthorized access’, mostly when the vulnerability disclosure was disputed or poorly handled.

SecurityWeek has reached out to the company for clarification and will update this article if it responds.

Originally published by SecurityWeek

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