Identity Theft News

Another payment processor hacked

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Visa and Mastercard are reportedly notifying banks about another security breach on a credit card payment processor, making it the third bank-related identity theft attack in the past three months.

The credit card companies are stating the compromised accounts have nothing to do with the recent Heartland Payment Systems security breach, which has yet to reveal how many customers were affected.

Cybercriminals allegedly breached the processor, which has yet to be named, in the same fashion as the Heartland attack by placing malware on the company's network.

Account numbers and expiration dates were taken in the attack, though it is not yet known how many accounts were infiltrated, according to an alert from the Pennsylvania Credit Union Association.

Visa and MasterCard began notifying card issuers about affected accounts on February 9th and 13th, respectively.

On February 12th, Visa held a conference call with several banks and stated the information stolen was not enough to create counterfeit cards. Also, the time period for the potentially exposed transactions occurred between February 2008 to August 2008.

Visa described the attack as a "very large compromise, similar to the Heartland compromise, but slightly smaller."ADNFCR-1765-ID-19042143-ADNFCR

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