News Story
INTRUDER GAINS ACCESS TO EIGHT MILLION CREDIT CARD NUMBERS
Tuesday 25 February 2003 6:47am
An intruder has gained access to eight million credit card account numbers by breaching the security of a company that processes transactions for merchants.
The companies hit are believed to include Visa, MasterCard and American Express.
Visa said there had been no sign of fraudulent activity involving the accounts and that the card association was monitoring the situation.
Christine Elliott, a spokeswoman for American Express, said that security processes were in place to determine if card numbers were being misused but that "we're not aware of any unusual activity with the affected cards".
Mastercard said it was notified of the breech early this month and that "approximately eight million account numbers, of which 2.2 million were MasterCard cards, were possibly compromised".
An estimated 3.4 million Visa cards were involved, said Visa USA spokesman John Abrams.
American Express declined to give a specific total. It was not immediately clear how many other card issuers were affected.
None of the card companies would identify the third-party processor or say exactly when or how the unauthorised intrusion occurred.
As a result, it could not be determined if the incident involved an outside hacker, unauthorised access by an employee or some kind of physical theft of a database.
Processors handle transactions for merchants, bundling and transmitting charges to the banks that issue the cards.
INTRUDER GAINS ACCESS TO EIGHT MILLION CREDIT CARD NUMBERS
Tuesday 25 February 2003 6:47am
An intruder has gained access to eight million credit card account numbers by breaching the security of a company that processes transactions for merchants.
The companies hit are believed to include Visa, MasterCard and American Express.
Visa said there had been no sign of fraudulent activity involving the accounts and that the card association was monitoring the situation.
Christine Elliott, a spokeswoman for American Express, said that security processes were in place to determine if card numbers were being misused but that "we're not aware of any unusual activity with the affected cards".
Mastercard said it was notified of the breech early this month and that "approximately eight million account numbers, of which 2.2 million were MasterCard cards, were possibly compromised".
An estimated 3.4 million Visa cards were involved, said Visa USA spokesman John Abrams.
American Express declined to give a specific total. It was not immediately clear how many other card issuers were affected.
None of the card companies would identify the third-party processor or say exactly when or how the unauthorised intrusion occurred.
As a result, it could not be determined if the incident involved an outside hacker, unauthorised access by an employee or some kind of physical theft of a database.
Processors handle transactions for merchants, bundling and transmitting charges to the banks that issue the cards.
