According to reports, about 50,000 credit card accounts were breached when the servers of a third-party processing company were compromised.
Cyber-criminals
hacked into a credit card processing company and stole information from about
50,000 Visa and MasterCard cardholders, the two companies said March 30.
In separate
statements, officials with Visa and MasterCard said they were aware of the data
breach at the third-party processing company and reiterated that their own
systems had not been compromised in the attack. The firms were notifying their
bank partners that issue cards about the breach, enabling the banks to monitor
the cards for fraud or issue new cards.
Neither
company named the processing company whose systems allegedly were breached, but
The Wall Street Journal, quoting
unnamed sources,
reported that the firm is Global Payments, an
Atlanta-based company that processes payment cards such as credit cards, debit
cards and gift cards.
According to a
notice that Visa is sending to banks, the data breach occurred sometime between
Jan. 21 and Feb. 25, according to
The
Journal.
In a
statement, Visa officials said that cardholders were not responsible for
fraudulent purchases.
As always,
Visa encourages cardholders to regularly monitor their accounts and to notify
their issuing financial institution promptly of any unusual activity, the
company said.
Visa said
consumer security tips can be found at the
VisaSecuritySense Website.
MasterCard
officials said in a statement that the company is continuing to monitor the
situation and take steps to safeguard account information. If cardholders have
any concerns about their individual accounts, they should contact their issuing
financial institution.
The data
breach was first reported March 30 on the
KrebsOnSecurity blog. Blogger Brian Krebs said Visa and
MasterCard began sending out notices of the breach to banks late last week, and
that the alerts also said that full Track 1 and Track 2 data was takenmeaning
that the information could be used to counterfeit new cards.
Its unclear
the impact of the breach, though Gartner analyst Avivah Litan said in a
blog post March 30 that there already has been a
ripple effect.
Ive spoken
with folks in the card business who are seeing signs of this breach mushroom,
Litan wrote. Looks like the hackers have started using the stolen card data
more recently. From what I hear, the breach involves a taxi and parking garage
company in the New York City area, so if youve paid a NYC cab in the last few
months with your credit or debit cardbe sure to check your card statements for
possible fraud.
Krebs said
that on March 28, officials at PSCU, a firm that offers online financial
services to credit unions, said it notified 482 customers that apparently had
cards affected by the breach. More than 56,000 Visa and MasterCard accounts
from those credit unions were compromised, Krebs wrote, and fraudulent activity
had been discovered on about 876 accounts that were geographically dispersed.
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