Entertainment giant National Amusements says more than 82,000 affected by cyberattack

National Amusements — which controls a sprawling empire of popular entertainment and news brands — announced a data breach last week that affected more than 82,000 people.

The Massachusetts-based company said it detected “suspicious activity” on its network almost one year ago on December 15, 2022.

An investigation found that the hackers had access to files on the company’s systems between December 13 and December 15. The information leaked includes names, financial account numbers, credit card numbers, debit card numbers and PINs.

The company did not respond to requests for comment about why it took a year to inform victims that their information had been stolen but told regulators in Maine that their investigation finished on August 23.

National Amusements is best known as the company that owns Paramount movie studio, CBS, MTV and thousands of movie theaters across the U.S., UK and Latin America. The company did not respond to questions about whether the breach was reported to officials in the UK, which says companies need to report incidents within 72 hours.

“Upon becoming aware of this event, we moved to investigate and respond, assess the security of relevant National Amusements’ systems, and identify any potentially impacted data,” they said in breach notification letters to victims.

The 82,128 people affected will be given one year of free identity protection services.

Paramount suffered a data breach in August that resulted in the leak of names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers and the person’s relationship to Paramount.

That incident followed an announcement in July by children’s television giant Nickelodeon — which is owned by Paramount — that it was investigating an alleged breach after hackers claimed to have stolen 500 GB of data.

Screenshots of the files allegedly taken included folders on some of Nickelodeon’s biggest titles, including Rugrats, Avatar: The Last Airbender, SpongeBob SquarePants, Danny Phantom, the Smurfs, Monster High and more.

It does not appear the National Amusements breach is connected to the breaches at Paramount or Nickelodeon.

Amid mounting debts, National Amusements made news this week for alleged interest in selling off Paramount and other pieces of its business to competitors.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that a previous data breach at Paramount involved a MOVEit vulnerability.