I feel good knowing that big corporations are keeping my personal information safe. Don't you?
http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-a3136902feb19,0,3530960.story?coll=ny-business-printHacker Gets 5.4M Credit Card Numbers
BLOOMBERG NEWS
February 19, 2003
Visa USA, MasterCard International, American Express and Morgan Stanley's Discover unit yesterday said an intruder accessed more than 5.4 million credit card account numbers earlier this month by hacking into the computer network of an outside payment processor.
MasterCard said about 2.2 million of the cards carried its name and Visa said 3.2 million of its card accounts were affected. An unspecified number of American Express and Discover account numbers were involved, spokeswomen for the two companies said. Visa and MasterCard did not identify the firm where the security breach occurred. MasterCard said investigations were under way.
Diane Terry, director of the fraud victim assistance department for the credit rating agency Trans Union, said the company hasn't received any complaints about the hacking from customers. She said that's good news.
"Usually, if they are going to use those numbers, they act very quickly," Terry said.
Discover spokeswoman Beth Metzler also said the company had seen no evidence that the breach had led to unauthorized use of credit cards.
MasterCard spokeswoman Christina Costa said banks that issued the affected cards were notified so they can monitor the accounts for possible fraud or issue new cards to customers.
"Visa's fraud team immediately notified all affected card-issuing financial institutions and is working with the third-party payment card processor to protect against the threat of a future intrusion," said Rosetta Jones, a Visa USA director. Visa cardholders aren't liable for unauthorized purchases on their accounts, Jones said.
"I don't recall such a large number" of credit card numbers being accessed, said Wenke Lee, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech who specializes in computer security. "I have not seen many cases where the intruder has gotten caught."
