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VISA, MasterCard Warn of 'Massive' Breach At Credit Card Processor

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-security:-priceless dept.

concealment writes with news that VISA and MasterCard have been warning banks of an incident at a U.S. card processor that may have compromised as many as 10 million credit card numbers. From the article: "Neither VISA nor MasterCard have said which U.S.-based processor was the source of the breach. But affected banks are now starting to analyze transaction data on the compromised cards, in hopes of finding a common point of purchase. Sources at two different major financial institutions said the transactions that most of the cards they analyzed seem to have in common are that they were used in parking garages in and around the New York City area." According to the Wall Street Journal, the breached company is Global Payments Inc.

4 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Really, no fucking article? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    And slashdot gets increasingly pathetic. Well, if anyone cares to RTFA:
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577313411294908868.html

    Not a whole lot of info from any source, Krebs seems to be the best though:
    http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/03/mastercard-visa-warn-of-processor-breach/#more-14393

  2. Re:No Source? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Krebs is all over it:

    http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/03/mastercard-visa-warn-of-processor-breach/

  3. Re:No Source? by EliSowash · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, it's real. I saw it on Krebs earlier. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/03/mastercard-visa-warn-of-processor-breach/

  4. Re:Thankfully! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    What do you expect when the parties that can best improve security (banks, VISA, Mastercard) have made sure that merchants (who can do very little about security) carry most of the liability from security failures?

    Banks, VISA, and Mastercard make tons of money from transaction fees, so they want to make transactions as easy as possible. They don't have to pay much for security breaches, so they are willing to sacrifice security for more transactions and more fees.

    If a buyer goes into a store with a stolen card, there is practically nothing a merchant can do to detect the fraud and stop the buyer from walking out the door with merchandise. Who pays for the fraud? The merchant.

    Until banks are on the hook for this fraud, nothing will change.