HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Customers who ate at Margarita??s Mexican Restaurant experienced credit and debit card fraud after thieves hacked into a third-party vendor??s network, Bank Info Security reports.

About 200 diners reported unauthorized activity on their credit and debit card accounts after paying with plastic at the Huntsville, Texas, eatery. According to Lt. Curt Landrum with the Huntsville Police Department, the restaurant??s POS system apparently had become infected with a virus introduced through a third-party vendor??s network.

"It does not appear to be a skimming incident," said Landrum. "This was happening through the computers at Margarita??s, and it looks like someone got in to the third-party vendor that handles the credit card information. They did not directly get into Margarita's system."

Restaurant employees do not appear to be involved in the thefts. Card numbers were stolen during April and May, with customers reporting unauthorized activity in July.

Investigators consider this incident a data breach and not a skimming issue. "Restaurants have always generated their share of compromises, and most of them in past years were low-level manual skim operations," said John Buzzard with FICO??s Card Alert Service.

Restaurants have seen an uptick in card fraud in recent months, with fast casual and pizza places being the main targets. Some experts have suggested that restaurants might have an increased vulnerability because of common POS software in the industry.