Contact:
Mag. My Hue McGowran
Phone: +43-1-81140-308
E-Mail: mcgowran@newsfox.com
| Pressbox | 
|
Arizona (pte024/21.06.2005/12:10) - A breach in data protection by a payment processing company in Arizona has led to the pilfering of millions of credit card users' details.
Mastercard http://www.mastercard.com identified a major credit card fraud at CardSystems Solutions http://www.cardsystems.com when it found that an inordinately high percentage of fraudulent transactions had taken place. The credit card company had commissioned an investigation in May 2005, which found that a computer programme had been installed in the CardSystems' network, from which it is suspected that details have been stolen by hackers.
Mastercard issued a statement to credit card users late last week. "We understand and fully appreciate the seriousness of the situation," the statement said. "Our customers and their customers are our lifeblood. We are sparing no effort to get to the bottom of this matter."
To make matter worse, CardSystems' chief executive John Perry, admitted in an interview that thousands of card records had been stolen due to the company's mismanagement. The company had saved 200,000 stolen records on its system for 'research purposes', which is not permitted by Mastercard or Visa, once the transactions had been processed.
"We should not have been doing that," Perry said. "That, however, has been remediated."
There will be a long process of file searching in order to find the addresses of the computer network that hacked into the system, says Neil Barrett, a computer security expert with UK company Information Risk Management.
Meanwhile, according to Peter Sommer, a computer security expert at the London School of Economics, there will always be a risk when using online credit card services.
"Most security breaches happen simply because hackers are persistent. And, if you are holding important information like this, you can't afford a single breach."
Considering the bulk of online transactions that occur everyday, "It's criminal business as usual, I'm afraid," Sommer says.
(end)
|
|
