There was some report on the radio news today about a vast number in the millions of credit card numbers and data and the 3 digit security #s being taken. Has anyone come across this news story?
MasterCard and Visa Data Theft Brings Concern To A Wide Profile of Card Holders
The breach of 10 million credit card holders’ data is believed to be the largest in history. The profile of card holders reveals that it also may cut across income brackets.
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Global Payments credit-card data breach: How big is the theft?
The Global Payments breach is the largest known credit-card theft from a business or financial institution in the past two years. Last year, data from some 3.4 million credit cards were grabbed.
By Mark Clayton, Staff writer / April 2, 2012
(Excerpted)
Among data theft worldwide last year, there were 855 incidents with 174 million compromised records, according to the Verizon study, which was conducted by Verizon’s RISK Team and included data from Australian, Dutch, and Irish police as well as the US Secret Service. In the report last year, the number of compromised records came in at an all-time low – 4 million.
Most payment-card thefts, the Verizon study found, are from small businesses, with only about 5 percent last year from large organizations. More than three-quarters of the breaches involved losses of fewer than 10,000 records. Just seven breaches involved more than 1 million records each.
“The criminal community has effectively been deterred from engaging in high-profile activity,” Verizon’s 2011 study found. “Pulling off a huge heist might achieve fame and fortune, but it also attracts a lot of unwanted attention.”
The Global Payments cybertheft falls squarely in the Verizon report’s “mega-breach” category. But it’s counter to the overall trend in which criminals targeting payment cards have largely shifted from big to small businesses to dodge law enforcement.
One notable mega-breach of a card processor occurred in 2008 against Heartland Payment Systems, which netted thieves data on more than 100 million cards. For that crime, hacker Albert Gonzalez was sentenced in 2010 to 20 years in prison.
It’s not certain yet what methods were used to snatch credit-card numbers from Global Payments, although early reports indicated a possible link to a New York City street gang and possibly to parking garages in the city, according to Brian Krebs, the cybersecurity blogger who first broke the story last Friday.
“In an alert sent to card-issuing banks ... [Visa and MasterCard] said the window of vulnerability for the breached processor (at that time unnamed) was between Jan. 21, 2012 and Feb. 25, 2012,” Mr. Krebs reported on his website. The data stolen included sufficient information for the thieves to counterfeit new cards, he said.
More:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0402/Global-Payments-credit-card-data-breach-How-big-is-the-theft
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1.5 Million Credit Card Numbers Stolen
By Ross Kaminsky on 4.2.12 @ 11:35AM
The computer systems of a major credit card payment processing company called Global Payments have been hacked, reportedly compromising information on up to 1.5 million credit card account numbers.
Two of my credit cards - (one MasterCard and one American Express) - are among the numbers stolen, as proven by Amex and Citibank calling me to verify charges on my cards (2 through Yahoo, 1 to Google AdWords, and 1 to EasyJet) which I did not make. Those cards have been canceled.
More:
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/04/02/15-million-credit-card-numbers