Domino's Pizza Is Being Blackmailed

If hackers were going to blackmail Domino's Pizza and request a ransom, you'd think they'd want to be paid by the slice. Unfortunately, that's not the case for the popular pizza chain: A group of hackers called Rex Mundi blackmailed Domino's Pizza in Europe for $40,700 Monday after compromising the private information of more than 600,000 customers. If the hackers don't get their cash, they said, they'll publicly release the information. The Domino's stores affected by the data security breach are located in France and Belgium.

The Rex Mundi hackers announced their latest achievement and laid out the deals for their ransom in a post on depaste.de (the site has been taken down, but lives on through Google Cache). The hackers claim they stole personal information from more than 592,000 French customers and over 58,000 Belgian patrons. In exchange, they want more than $41,000, for reasons that remain unknown but don't appear to be pizza-related.

The compromised information include names, addresses, phone numbers and email account passwords... as well as favorite pizza toppings. Fortunately, no credit card or bank account information was compromised because Domino's in France and Belgium is evidently "a bit outdated," according to the pizza chain's vice president of communications, Tim McIntyre. He added that the data compromise is "isolated" to France and Belgium.

Although the hackers won't be ordering pizza on a customer's dime, they might snoop through an email account. If you've made a purchase at a Domino's in France or Belgium lately, you should probably change your email password, stat.

The hackers said in their post that Domino's has until 8 p.m. Central European Time to meet their demands. That time has obviously passed, and Domino's has yet to pay out any cash.

On the bright side, it just got a whole lot easier to order Domino's Pizza in America. In an appeal to Millennials, Domino's introduced a voice-controlled mobile app this week. The new voice-assisted platform allows users to place an order by simply talking to "Dom," a pizza chain version of Siri. The app is currently only iPhone and Android users.

"There will be a day when typing on keyboards or with thumbs on mobile devices will come to a close; we want to be the ones who continue to advance the technology experience – hand-in-hand with our customers," Patrick Doyle, Domino's Pizza president and CEO, said in a statement.

Let's just hope that "Dom" and his voice-recognition software can help keep the Domino's hackers away.