Thursday, January 22, 2009

Hacker Theft Could be the Largest Credit Card Crime in History

Hackers breach Heartland Payment credit card system

Heartland Payment Systems hpy on Tuesday disclosed that intruders hacked into the computers it uses to process 100 million payment card transactions per month for 175,000 merchants. The number of victims is still unknown.

Heartland's disclosure coincides with reports of heightened criminal activities involving stolen payment card numbers. Security firm CardCops has been tracking a 20% year-over-year increase in Internet chat room activity where hackers test batches of payment card numbers to make sure that they're active.

To read the full news story, click here.

My two cents: This is why, folks, you don't want to get all excited about "cloud computing", or allow your governments to create large "databases".. like a "national health registry", or "crime database".. and why I don't use "online backup" to store my files.
Why trust someone else's server? The Conficker outbreak shows you how well servers get patched..

I feel bad for the folks at HPS.. the cost to clean this up is going to be astounding..

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